Only a few years ago, my movie watching habits were excessively resistant to anything new. It was simply a combination of good fortune and the guidance of the movie lovers online that I would come upon the films that would change my life. But as I began to branch out, how did I form my watchlist? Why did I watch any of these movies in the first place? I attribute much of my early watchlist inspiration to the abundance of “Top 100” or “Greatest Movies” lists on the internet. Each list, from the AFI to Rotten Tomatoes, consisted of the usual suspects of classic cinema (The Godfather, Citizen Kane, etc). It’s now the opinion of Cinema 98 that these lists are inherently reductive; they have boiled down the expansive history of world film into a list with little connection to the art they contain. This being said, there is one film that is always on the list, a work of art that laid the foundation for some of the most successful movies ever made, and that often compels me to write such a list simply so that I can put it at the top. This is the prodigious Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that is, by my standards, the greatest movie ever made.

2001 was born from the fledgeling space age of the 60’s, with the film lauded by critics for its accurate portrayal of space flight. But capturing the audience’s Cold War-era fascination with spaceflight and rocket ships was only one of Kubrick’s tools to draw the attention of viewers to a beautiful and terrifying exploration of our place in the universe and the future we have paved for ourselves. With Geoffrey Unsworth at the helm of the cinematography, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a gold mine of visual genius. The infinite expanse of space is so terrifyingly vast as each piece of impossibly detailed machinery floats mesmerizingly into the most uncharted component of our world. The sequence of images and colors as Bowman is overcome by the forces of the monolith is exceedingly strange and psychedelic. Each visual moment of the film feels almost excessively deliberate and meticulously crafted, and as a result each shot is perfectly formed to provoke emotion in the audience; one moment you will sit in awe and the next recoil in terror. The visual architects chose to depict huge expansive environments along with closer and more intimate shots to tell the story, and such is the magic of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

At the risk of sounding trite or cliche, Kubrick's creative vision for the film was decades ahead of its time. His visual work with miniatures and camera technique that was foundational to the science fiction genre spoke in unison with an unnervingly insightful and aware tale of humanity and our future. As an astronaut named David Bowman sets off for Jupiter on the Discovery One, his mission is thrown off by the ship’s conscious AI computer, HAL 9000. It is shockingly revealed that they have been sent to Jupiter in search of an otherworldly monolith, a sign of another presence in our universe that is embedded in the origins of human life. Bowman is taken and observed by the aliens before transforming as a colossal floating foetus and returning to the Earth. As we watch the film, based on work by Arthur C Clarke, we are, regardless of our interpretation, subject to the notion that we are not alone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey we confront that we may be doomed by the unknown forces of our universe and that we may be destroyed by our own creations, that we may be fated to rebirth or that perhaps humanity have evolved at the behest of an alien force. And today it seems that the often debated message of the film was, particularly in regards to artificial intelligence, trying to tell us something urgent and perhaps it is too late to listen.

Like much of Stanley Kubrik's work, this adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same name is both lauded and criticized heavily. "A Clockwork Orange," Kubrik's first movie after the legendary "2001: A Space Odyssey," was in a way an aggressive expression of Kubrik's range. After his work on an incredibly cerebral film, the director came out with a movie terrifyingly human, a sharp and heavily satirical work that would shock and scandalize a nation and by the world of cinema. 

The film portrays violent and sociopathic boy Alex DeLarge (portrayed by Malcom McDowell) living in a bleak dystopian Britain. His hobbies mostly include acts of "ultraviolence" with his gang of "droogs." His terrorizing is soon paused by his arrest, where Alex is put through a process to imbue him with the empathy he is lacking, and he is thrust into the world to face his past acts of violence.

Cinematically the film is great. The dreamlike and surreal cinematography give the movie a quality few others have acheived. The iconic opening shot as the delinquet protagonist stares into the camera is only made more intense and unsettling by the film's haunting theme. Each performance, particularly that of Malcom McDowell, is impressive. But the feel of the movie's gratuitous and frankly soulless violence, particularly a gruesome rape scene in the opening minutes of the movie, give the viewer so much discomfort it detracts from the message and aesthetics. "A Clockwork Orange" is incredibly well made, yet one has to wonder how much more successfully it could have gotten it's message across without such extensive showing of the book's original violence. 

Today Ridley Scott can be thought of as many directors, all with an excellent creative and visual eye, but many with less then desirable taste in scripts and varying levels of skill in excecuting period films. But for a glorious and fleeting period in the late 70s and early 80s, Scott was one man doing what he does best; epic, beautiful science fiction. Few films will touch the legacy of the thriller that changed Ridley Scott's career, the film minimally titled Alien.

The best way to watch Alien is as a lover of the action and science fiction of the 70's and 80's first and a movie lover second.  The movie is bursting with thrills and classic quotes, it brims with suspense and tension, it has every quality craved by any fan of other sci-fi flicks of it's era. But Alien is not campy or cheap, it's not careless and most decidedly not a Spielberg simpatico-alien narrative. It's true, the script struggles with a few moments of corny humor and occasionally falls into action movie cliches, but what Alien is is deliberate and attentively formed into something unforgettable.

The film follows a team of privately employed astronaughts in a distant future returning from a mission who are woken from their stasis to investigate an abandoned alien ship. After an alien parasite latches on a crewmate, the crew of the freight Nostromo must fight for their lives against the alien who has grown into a monster. The performances of the side characters are all good yet unremarkable, but it's the acting of Sigourney Weaver as now feminist icon Ripley that stands out. Aside from the acting, the most important non-visual element here is the pacing. Every moment of the the film is intentionally foreboding in a way that makes the final showdown with the creature that much more terrifying, as the screentime of the alien is relatively small but the buildup is time well spent. But I would be remiss in convincing a reader to watch the film for the plot; the visual action is what makes Alien one of the all time greats.

The movie is made for the big screen. Any oppurtunity you take to watch it in a theater will move you to call it aesthetically flawless, as I did after my first in-theater watch at New York's best revival house Film Forum. It's on the walk out of the theater and my cab ride to a friend's house that I can't stop thinking about the visuals. I saw Alien for the first time a year before at home and naturally thought it was great. But something about my second watch had made the worn sets of the crew's star freighter "Nostromo" more impressive and the scenes of the crew desparately trying to ward off the creature more claustrophobic. The film's best shots are dark and grimy with careful attention payed to the switch between the close immersive cameria work and the wider shots, most notable in scenes where the crew explores the alien mothership. It's no exaggeration that the film's creators had perfectly refined every visual aspect from the sets to the elongated and monstrous head of the primary antagonist, or, the Alien. It's those minute details that push me to label this one of the greatest sci-fi action films ever made. 9/10 - Asa Row

At this point this movie and really any praise of the now disgraced Woody Allen are distinctly dated, and for good reason. But honestly, the intelligent and rambling wit of Annie Hall is too brilliant to ignore. In fact I would go so far as to say that it would be an insult to my upbringing as a Jewish New Yorker not to talk about this extensively brilliant and incredibly romantic comedy-drama (rom-dramedy). 

First thing that whatever old person told you to watch this movie did not tell you; it's pretty weird. The storytelling is very scattered, fourth wall breaks are frequent and the movie is prone to nervous tangents on sexual dynamics and American Jews. In Annie Hall, Allen chose not to deviate from the film formula, opting instead to rewrite it. Woven into the fabric of neurotic humor are the occasional heartfelt and poigniant moments and obnoxiously well framed camera shots for the viewers who tire of Allen's self incessant neuroticism. 

For Woody Allen, the character of Alvy Singer, an obsessive and fretful Jewish comedian in New York dating a woman named Annie Hall, was incredibly indulgent. Indulgent of himself and indulgent of a major American culture. Singer's character is rife with stereotypes of educated Jewish New Yorkers, some positive (great wit and intelligence) , and some obviously not, mostly the character's portrayed insufferability and constant discussion of his shrink (and after all, a stereotype is not great regardless of what it says). But honestly, the reason this movie is really stand out is because it's funny. Woody Allen, despite discoveries after the release of the film, is hysterical. And it's precisely the fact that this movie can have so many intricacies and references and details and I will still appreciate it as "funny" that makes it great. It is delightfully funny and delightfully Upper West Side.

Francis Ford Coppola's early career was marked by many successes, most memorable The Godfather  of 1971 which remains the most critically lauded film every made. But in 1979, a decade after John Milius began writing the script,  Coppola released what I cosider to be his masterpiece and, even more so, one of the greatest movies of all time. Apocalypse Now is a blend of the surreal, the horrific and the hilarious. The movie is a three hour epic following Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), a cynical covert operative on his second deployment in Vietnam in 1969. After being unable to adjust to civilian life after his time in the war he finds himself back in Saigon where he is tasked with a top secret mission; to travel upriver into Cambodian territory where he is to assassinate a Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has gone rogue and leads a cult-like army against North Vietnamese forces. As Willard goes upriver via a navy patrol boat, he descends further into madness as he witnesses things more terrible then he has ever imagined, often at the hands of his fellow soldiers.

There are too many things to compliment about Apocalypse Now. There is the brilliant cinematography of Vittorio Storaro in the dense jungles and rivers of the Phillippines. The standout performances of Sheen, Brando and Laurence Fishburne, who gained recognition for his role, are an equally important part of the film. But what makes Apocalypse Now  stick with you for months after your first viewing, what keeps you up at night, is that gnawing question of "What is this goddamn movie actually about?" The fact is that nobody has ever been quite sure, no matter how many times you see it. As Coppola himself stated, it is more complex than a simple anti war film.  Many of its violent depictions are so epic that they provoke this perverse fascination wit the brutality of war. And so, to my best understanding, the statement of Apocalypse Now is that war is psychosis. War, the most violent and morally base like Vietnam, where the soldiers fought for the selfish interests of men thousands of miles away,  is a stage for the most violent and insane impulses to emerge. In that sense the film is crystal clear;  Kurtz and Kilgore and Willard and his men on the boat and thousands more were going insane and nobody would stop the bloodshed for bloodshed's sake. That twisted honesty is what makes Apoclypse Now unforgettable. 

It seems most important now, at this time in the world of art, to study this renewed fascination with the idea of a tortured artist. We could, if we wanted, discuss the impact of 2014’s Whiplash on the modern perceptions of the costs of greatness. But given the rampant criticism of that movie’s realism and the relevance of the musical content and myself having been a dancer for eight years, the acclaimed Black Swan is simply a better choice. 

It’s too difficult to distinguish the most disturbing elements of this film. The body horror is subtle, yet it achieves the feel of madness that the movie looks for. But the traditional use of horror is not what makes the movie one of the most unsettling I’ve ever seen. It’s the tension in the mother’s demeanor as she becomes increasingly forceful and overbearing. It’s Nina’s eating disorder and her obsessive and impulsive habits of self destructiveness. It is every movement and every mannerism of Vincent Cassel as the controlling instructor Thomas as he manipulates and abuses Nina forcing her to madness.

Black Swan is, like the greatest works of cinema, a realization of something much more important than a movie. It’s the exploration of the destructive elements of an industry I’ve, at times, had the misfortune of witnessing in small and imperceptible ways. In all the best ways, it indicts the tyrannical rule of abuse, perfectionism and patriarchal messaging and beauty standards in the world of ballet. Between the flawless performances, messaging and writing and the brilliant use of handheld cinematography it is difficult to identify what Black Swan does poorly. 

There’s little question to whether or not I love to write and talk about movies, however in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, I find myself entirely unsure of what to say. It is the nonlinear nature of the narrative and the esoteric collage of dreamscapes and newsreels that puts me completely out of my depth. In Mirror, a film that is concluded by most to be Tarkovsky’s magnum opus, meaning is in every frame, but so personal to Tarkovsky and so singular to its time that the message is exceptionally difficult to draw out. 

What defines perfection in cinematography? In addition to any research of the technical aspects of shooting a film, I would insist that anybody with this question watch Mirror. Each shot is long. The takes fit together into a stream of consciousness as surreal as a living mind at work. The pans and tracking shots are uncannily smooth, camera work so perfect I imagine it can only be achieved with superhuman abilities. The dream sequences are interspersed into the protagonist, Aleksei’s, memories, often in sepia tones and often about his mother. As if the collage was not sufficiently complex and layered, Tarkovsky pulls newsreels and clips of the world’s surrounding chaos and cuts them in as they fit into the personal narrative. Footage of the Spanish civil war as loyalist neighbors of the protagonist consider their departure from Spain and clips of the Sino Soviet Border Conflict as a young Aleksei resides in a military camp during World War II. Mirror is as contemplative of a citizen’s place in the struggles of the world around them as it is introspective. 

The story presents some of the film’s triumphs, and also some of its admittedly few shortcomings. Perhaps I am too young, or too lacking in culture and historical understanding to grasp every aspect of this narrative. But in spite of the sweeping beauty of the film, there are times where the construction of the dreamscapes and nonlinear scattering of memory struggles to grasp my attention or my understanding. I’m confident that the dreamscape of Aleksei's mother’s struggles at work and the exceptionally odd sequence of Aleksei’s son’s recitation of Pushkin are poignant, but that impact is lost on me. At times, Tarkovsky’s unusal genius is a touch too unsual. Regardless, the brilliance of his writing comes through often enough to keep me fascinated. In my own view, Mirror is about regret and contemplation and personal failure. Aleksei, the protagonist who is on his deathbed, reflects on the difficult life of his mother and his failure to mend their relationship as well as his mistakes in his ended marriage and how he raised his child. 

This all being said, obsessing over Tarkovsky's intents in the film will only get you so far. I would say fundamentally that the reason to watch Mirror is to gain your own connection to the work. If a film so complex and so gorgeous is not one of the greats, it’s hard to imagine what good cinema is.

It's difficult to say what is more impressive about A Fistful of Dollars; the stunning visuals or the film's incredibly distinct impact on global cinema. In 1967 the movie released in American theaters, and despite the commercial success it had seen in Europe and would see in the States, critics dismissed the film, believing the violence and the low budget production of the film to be trashy. What critics would not see until decades later was that Italian director Sergio Leone managed to make a film that completely transformed the American fantasy of the Wild West. Whether the film met the standards of critics in the 1960's became inconsequential; the impact was made. Fisftul''s portrayal of the Wild West was grittier, and darker portrayal of an antihero that starkly contrasted with the "cowboys and Indians" narratives that came before it. 

The plot is classic Western adventure through and through. Today, Clint Eastwood's portrayal of The Man With No Name is cliche or tired, but when the movie was made, this iconic character essentially invented the archetype, and he lives up to the legend. Every shootout, every standoff and every introduction exudes the gritty and mysterious attitude that has become synonymous with the Western outlaw.  In the film Eastwood's character plays the Rojo brothers, led by erratic and violent Ramón, against the Baxter family led by the town Sheriff John Baxter.  The acting, while at times being slightly overdone, is as great as the thrilling action sequences. Watch the movie and you will wonder why you hadn't seen it sooner, for the founding movie of the Spaghetti Western genre is every bit as iconic as they say. 

In our list of 98 films, perhaps modern cinema gets lost in a sea of central classics in movie history. While some still try to revive the old styles of film, Justine Triet made something beautifully new and perhaps even proved to film loving cynics that there are still beautiful movies to be made. Anatomy of a Fall stars Sandra Hüller during her critically lauded run of film appearances in 2023, along with a supporting cast of Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner and Samuel Theis, and tragically follows a novelist trying to prove her innocence in an investigation of her husband's mysterious death. The title refers to the husband, Samuel, and his fall from a window in their isolated mountain house near Grenoble. 

One could say the most impressive component of the movie is its incorporation of some great camera work and use of music and sound. Most obviously Anatomy of A Fall opens with a masterfully shot buildup to Daniel's discovery of his father's body in the snow as a steel drum instrumental of 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P" blares in the background. Throughout the movie the interior of the house feels warm in contrast to the vast, stunning, snow covered landscape which is put on full display throughout the film. But the visuals are not the centerpiece of the movie, they are a vessel for a tense exploration of a broken family. The exposition and furthering of the plot are mostly divided between the trial of the central character, Sandra Voyter, and her separate interactions with her lawyer and other figures such as her son, Daniel, who is visually impaired. While the death is intially thought of as suicide, the movie explores the tragic rifts in the marriage of Samuel and Sandra, dissecting their relationship and the cemantics of Samuel's fall in court as Sandra is accused of murdering him. Anatomy of a Fall is a beautiful dive into loss and the struggles we endure in love. Oscar nominations in recent years have been painfully hit or miss, but this film is a triumph . 

It’s difficult to feel confident in your critique of a film made in a language you can’t understand about a topic completely out of your depth, and yet in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, I am certain that it is my favorite movie ever made. Kassovitz and his collaborators created that elusive film that manages to balance its beautiful and entertaining qualities with deeply serious and bleak elements; in essence, La Haine or its translated title Hate is a grim and blatantly political tale told in the most interesting way. 

Visually the film is a great success, and easily contains some of my favorite cinematography ever filmed. The post production switch to black and white was a very necessary choice; this color palette is much more suited to capture the grit and edge of the world in which the main characters live, accentuates the lighting creating some very stark contrasts. La Haine accels the most in its camera work, even beyond the famous dolly zoom as the boys arrive in Paris and the legendary mirror shot of Vincent Cassel. Besides these moments, the shots are grounded, in perfect form highlighting the disorganization and systemic issues surrounding the central story and creating a greatly immersive quality.

The film, starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde and Saïd Taghmaoui as three teenagers living in the projects outside of Paris, is a meditation on the eruption of violence that occurs when social tensions have been left to grow unchecked. La Haine portrays these three teenagers, one Black, one Arab and one Jewish, in a “day in the life” style as they live their lives following a violent riot the night before that culminated in the brutal beating of an acquaintance, Abdel, at the hands of police officers. Cassel’s character Vinz participated in the riot and collected a revolver dropped by an officer during the riot. They go about their day in typical fashion but their experiences become more and more shaped by the inequality of their environment and their lives seem destined to take a violent turn. The reason that the brutal story is so compelling is because the characters are uncomfortably real and alive. Vinz, Saïd and Hubert live in an environment that has imported American pop culture and in many ways their portrayal is made for adolescents across the world. Their banter, often full of insults and slurs, their periodic drug use, materialism and general ambivalence are a bleak but wholly real reflection of the lives of teenagers. And for teenagers marginalized by the law and society, subject to brutality and discriminatory violence and essentially unable to improve their situation, their attitudes towards life are not without reason. The kids are the central plot device of the movie; their stories are a sharp criticism of France’s systemic racism, tension between affluent and marginalized communities and most obviously the police brutality within the project or “suburbs,” where the death of several teenagers inspired Kassovitz in making the film. In the end, it’s the beauty you can find in such a difficult narrative that makes La Haine great. 9.5/10