[the 'stache]

Ten best films of all-time? Tough question. I've been intensively studying film history for about the past five years, as I'm going to write books about the subject. Doing so has exposed me to a great number of films I probably otherwise wouldn't have seen, and I'm a better person for having seen them. The money I used to spend on my collection has been diverted to building my film library over that time. I know that streaming is the way of the future, but I'm a real physical media guy.

This is my top ten right now. I'm not going to put them in any order, as that would be a bit of a nightmare. And it may change, upon further reflection.

My list:

David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
Orson Welles' Citizen Kane
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo
Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull
Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon
Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc
Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt
Ingmar Bergman's Persona

With so many different eras, genres and countries of origin to choose from, picking only the ten best films feels like an exercise in futility. As soon as I selected Bergman's film, I'm immediately looking at the list, and trying to figure out how I can get The Godfather in, as well as Tokyo Story, City Lights, Sunrise, and a handful of others.

There's nothing by Billy Wilder, or John Ford. No Andrei Tarkovsky, Francois Truffaut, Jean Renoir, John Cassavetes, or Krzysztof Kieslowski.

This is exceedingly difficult.