Bientôt

I shall be returning to regularly scheduled updates soon. Again, sorry for the absence.

For the invisible man who can sing in a visible voice

March has been a sad month for music lovers, with Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star, dying of a heart attack yesterday and Mark Linkous, the mastermind behind Sparklehorse, taking his life over a week ago. Big Star was one of the great American rock bands of the 1970s, headed by Chilton and the tragic, late Chris Bell. While commercial success eluded the group in their heyday, their influence could be heard on countless American rock bands from the mid-1980s on, from R.E.M. to Primal Scream. Chilton's musical legacy was immortalized twice for subsequent generations by Paul Westerberg and his The Replacements' brilliant anthem to the singer, titled simply "Alex Chilton," and Ivo Watts-Russell's 4AD "supergroup" This Mortal Coil, who covered "Kangaroo" (with vocals by Cindytalk lead singer Gordon Sharp) and "Holocaust" (sung by Howard Devoto of The Buzzcocks) on the album It'll End in Tears. A Big Star tribute album was released in 2006, which featured covers by Wilco, The Afghan Whigs, The Posies and Teenage Fanclub. Chilton and Big Star's music started appearing in a number of Gen X films like Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming and Empire Records and more recently in both Adventureland and Thumbsucker.

Mark Linkous was the brains behind Sparklehorse, one of the great, lesser known bands to come out of the mid-90s. Sparklehorse reached its greatest success in 2001 with the album It's a Wonderful Life, which featured guest vocalists PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and Nina Persson of The Cardigans. In 2009, Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse collaborated together on a project entitled Dark Night of the Soul, which was to be accompanied with a photo booklet from David Lynch. The vocalists on the album included Iggy Pop, Persson, Julian Casablancas, Lynch, Frank Black, The Flaming Lips, James Mercer of The Shins, Suzanne Vega and the late Vic Chesnutt. Despite legal troubles with the release, Dark Night of the Soul was available streaming on NPR's website, and it rumored to have an official release sometime this year. A number of musicians have been offering requiems for Linkous, including Steven Drozd, Steve Albini and Patti Smith.

Leopards, Deserts and Trains: Criterion in June

Criterion announced their June titles yesterday, with a DVD and Blu-ray of Michelangelo Antonioni's first color feature Red Desert [Il deserto rosso], starring a brunette Monica Vitti, among the releases. Red Desert, easily one of my favorite films, will hit shelves on the 22nd. Luchino Visconti's lavish historical epic The Leopard [Il gattopardo], which stars Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Pierre Clémenti among others, will hit Blu-ray on the same date. Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, one of the two "episodic" Jarmusch films I like, is bowing on DVD and Blu-ray on the 15th. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up is set for the 8th; the DVD only release includes Kiarostami's The Traveler from 1974. Strangely the release doesn't include Nanni Moretti's short doc Il giorno della prima di Close Up, which was featured on both the UK and French editions. It is however available on Cinema 16's European Shorts collection. The other two DVD releases are Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] on the 15th and Carol Reed's 1940 thriller Night Train to Munich on the 22nd. Correction: (Thanks Blake) Everlasting Moments and Close-Up will also be Blu-ray releases (they weren't listed yesterday).

On the horizon from Criterion, I've been told two more Ozu films are coming. Also, they mentioned in the February newsletter that Andrea Arnold would soon be included in the Collection later this year, which must be in reference to Fish Tank through their partnership with IFC Films. It'd be great to see the two shorts Arnold made before her Oscar-winning Wasp (Dog and Milk) on their release.

bfd 2010

Christ. The Independent Spirit Awards proved to be just as useless as the Oscars usually are. So, as tonight's going to suck, why not just pour yourself too many cocktails (or have someone do it for you) and find people that can make fun of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman's face with you? I'll hopefully be doing the same.

...Two Months (and a few days) Later

Inspired by a recent conversation with my oldest friend Dan, I’ve been positively motivated to write what I wanted to but couldn’t, for several reasons, put together for the posting of my list of The Decade List of 100. Tying ideas together successfully has always been the weakest facet of my writing, so the prospect of sifting through ten years of cinema, especially from the perspective of someone who entered those years at the age of 15, felt like an insurmountable task. It still, to some extent, seems outside the realm of possibility, but at least now I can attempt to explain or defend some of what was going through my head while arranging the list at hand.

Before I had a chance to come up with a better name for it, “The Decade List” stuck, serendipitously masking any questionable adjective one might have used to modify “Films of the ‘00s.” Neither “best” nor “favorite” felt like the correct modifier, as I tried to objectively assess the films I chose without completely abandoning some of the personal attachments I’ve developed with them over the years (or, in some cases, over much smaller of a time frame). That 43 of the films were at least partially financed by the French film industry certainly points to one of the personal biases I didn’t try to look past. That only 3 were documentaries shows another, one I’m not exactly proud of. The double (and triple and quadruple) appearances of 17 directors might suggest I didn’t put that auteur inclination aside either, but it isn’t exactly true, as omitting Clean, The Boss of It All, Time of the Wolf, Anatomy of Hell and Last Days was a lot easier than eliminating films whose directors only made a single appearance on the final list.

Though I never properly introduced the project (as I didn’t have a clear idea of where it was headed upon conception), I did establish a single rule for inclusion: the film had to make its international premiere after December 31, 1999 and before January 1, 2010. Considering the nature of the project, that rule might have sounded redundant, but it needed to be clearly stated, as it cancelled out films such as Claire Denis’ Beau travail, Nagisa Oshima’s Taboo, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and Laurent Cantet’s Human Resources, all of which officially premiered in ’99 but hit the U.S. within the acceptable window.

It’s hard to decide which of the two grave sins of omission (not defending the list as a whole or not defending the film I chose as my #1) is worse, but I like to think the reason I had nothing to write about Dogville was the best vindication for its placement. No other film I watched for the sake of making this list screamed out, “this is it,” the way Dogville did. The sensation isn’t something I can successfully articulate nor defend in any intellectual manner. That I happened to chose a film that was appearing with some frequency on top of others’ similar lists made the task even more difficult. Do I really have anything new to say about a film that’s been written about as extensively as Dogville, and even if I did make a check-list of all the things it does right, would that come close to defining that seemingly inexplicable feeling I got while watching it?

What I will say, however, was that no other film made me re-examine and eventually adjust my once rigidly negative feelings toward its filmmaker the way Dogville did. Whether a harsh reaction to the emotions von Trier conjured inside of me with Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves and The Idiots or the inability to determine why he was doing so, my hatred for the director vanished midway through watching Dogville for the first time, and by the time the saxophone comes in on “Young Americans,” I was singing a much different song about von Trier. While I still think his motives in Dancer in the Dark are tough to define, Dogville and its world of invisible physical boundaries revealed the man behind the curtain and provided me with a special kind of elation (the sort that comes best from misanthropy).

With regard to Michael Haneke, a filmmaker who seems to be falling out of favor with a lot of people I know (or read), I feel no qualms about having him as the most featured filmmaker on the 100. While I do generally like Time of the Wolf, I think Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Caché and The White Ribbon represent the upper tier of his work over the past decade. However, Dan asked me if The Piano Teacher really is better than Caché, and likely, it isn’t, especially when considering Haneke’s oeuvre as a whole and his cinematic obsessions. While I acknowledge that, in terms of Haneke’s career, Caché will likely stand out as his “masterpiece,” The Piano Teacher marked my first experience with Haneke on the big screen and still remains one of my finer theatrical experiences, even though it was still fantastic to see Caché on opening night with an even larger audience. This particular bias is probably more common with albums than films as I can’t think of any other films on the list that would fall under this distinction.

The “well, it was my first time” bias wasn’t the only that was at work when organizing the films. For the majority of the year, I spent more time bestowing praise upon Sébastien Lifshitz, the one filmmaker I knew most people weren’t familiar with, than most of the other directors represented. So on some level, I think I felt it my duty to include either Wild Side or Come Undone in my top 10 instead of judging either of the films against all the rest. A close friend of mine, who also shared my enthusiasm for Lifshitz, sent me an e-mail recently saying he’d rewatched Wild Side and been surprised to have found it to be more ornamental than he’d remembered. As I read that, I knew exactly what he meant and perhaps even thought something along those lines when watching it again in December. In looking at the ten films that follow Wild Side on the list, I recognize now that all ten are better films. Had I not spent so much time absorbing as much cinema as I could over the past decade, I would have preferred naming just the ten best films of the Aughts: ten years, ten films and (likely) ten filmmakers. With that in mind, spot number 10 becomes nearly as important as spot number 1, signifying not the tenth best film you saw so much as the one film you wanted to be sure you didn’t leave off the list. So when dealing with a list of 100, both spots 10 and 100 fall prey to that idea.

If I thought really hard about it, I could probably come up with predilections for about half, in addition to factors working against about a fourth of them. As I don’t care to do so, I’ll simply point out the ones that came to mind first. Time certainly didn’t work in the favor of In the Mood for Love, allowing its director to commit a giant fuck up with My Blueberry Nights, which wouldn’t have been as damning if it didn’t share the thematic and stylistic traits that defined the rest of his works. And while the same could be said for Michael Haneke and his Funny Games remake, he at least had the chance to redeem himself (in my eyes) with The White Ribbon. Time didn’t seem to work in the favor of Mulholland Drive in the ranking either, as it had nine years to lose some of its luster from being analyzed/decrypted to death and failing to retain the magic of seeing it for the first time in its subsequent viewings. Time did work in the favor of There Will Be Blood, however, and the fact that I only watched it twice with my opinion of it growing exponentially the more I thought about it.

A couple of people seemed surprised to see not only how high I’d ranked Sex Is Comedy but that I’d placed it above the rest of Catherine Breillat’s other films. For reasons I’m not exactly sure, several films got knocked down in the rankings for containing scenes or moments I couldn’t defend intellectually or artistically. For Fat Girl, I couldn’t justify Breillat’s need to violently murder two of her characters. For Inside, I couldn’t see the explanation of why Béatrice Dalle was terrorizing Allyson Paradis as anything but a lame cop-out. For Mysterious Skin, I kept hearing that awful line Joseph Gordon-Levitt screams in the middle of the film. For Trouble Every Day, I’m still not even sure. None of Breillat’s other films really came to life the way Sex Is Comedy did on repeat viewings. Of course, I had always regarded Sex Is Comedy as a lesser film in Breillat’s canon, so finding out that I was wrong placed it in favor of discovering that I wasn’t truly satisfied with one of Fat Girl’s consequential elements.

In reviewing the annual Best Of lists I’ve written for this blog, I’ve called some truly worthless films (like The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down—Christ, drugs must have been involved) the best of their given year, as well as films that ultimately weren’t anything special (like Pan’s Labyrinth and 2046). With that said, I’ll probably recognize at least one or two of these films as being shitty after some time passes, even though I spent a lot more time on this than any of annual run-downs.

I suppose the sort of defense for my ’00 list that would make the most sense (much more so than overanalyzing my own prejudices and miscalculations) would be one where I explored the commonalities between the films I ranked highest or what I looked for when ordering them (I won’t pretend to make some sort of hyperbolic umbrella statement about the decade in cinema). Malheureusement, I can only come up with some really facile descriptors like “bold” and “obstinate” to connect the films, and those will do about as much justice to the films as forcing some loose, interlocking theme would. I made the list because I thought I would enjoy doing so, and I did… some of the time. Ultimately though the whole thing was simply a way for me to hopefully introduce films and/or filmmakers to others—the exact reason I started a blog, only in project form. If I happened to succeed on that level, then the self-inflicted exhaustion and frustration was (probably) worth it.

Because I was asked... some Oscar predictions

I was asked to participate in an Oscar Competition, hosted by VoucherCodes.co.uk, and while the Academy Awards have been a sore subject with me this year, I've made some predictions, all of which are mostly speculative. For past two years, I've actually managed to see every nominated film in the major categories (excluding foreign and documentary, as they weren't as easy to come by). This year, I've seen maybe half of the nominees, most of which have underwhelmed me (to say the least). As the competition doesn't require me to predict all of the nominees, I've only selected predictions in the categories where I thought I had a clear enough idea of who might be taking home the gold (and I'm purposefully staying away from that scary Best Actress category). These are not the people or films I think should win, mind you. For those in the UK, be sure to check out VoucherCodes.co.uk's deals on amazon.co.uk and lovefilm.com (like Netflix, only in the UK). So here goes...

Picture: Avatar
Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore, Avatar
Animated Feature: Up
Song: "The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart
Documentary: The Cove
Sound Editing: Avatar
Sound Mixing: Avatar
Visual Effects: Avatar

I might fill in the blanks by Sunday. We'll see.

Spoke to Soon; More from the Warner Archive

The day after I mentioned a number of new films coming to the Warner Archive, The New York Post revealed even more titles becoming available on 16 March (thanks, Eric). Funny enough, all of the titles I give a shit about seem to be the ones the writer doesn't as they're all listed near the end. The ones I didn't mention yesterday include Lina Wertmüller's Night Full of Rain [La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia] with Candice Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini; István Szabó's Meeting Venus with Glenn Close and Niels Arestrup; James Ivory's Surviving Picasso with Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone and Julianne Moore; Art Napoleon's Too Much, Too Soon with Dorothy Malone and Errol Flynn; and Dino Risi's The Priest's Wife [La moglie del prete] with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Arizona Dream, Rabbit, Run, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later and Saint Joan will also be available on the 16th.

Warner Archive, TCM Vault, Online Streaming and the Usual DVD Update

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César Awards 2010

Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (predictably) swept the Césars today, taking home nine awards including Meilleur film (Best Film), Réalisateur (Director) and Scénario original (Original Screenplay). Its heartthrob star Tahar Rahim, already quite the celebrity in France despite appearing in just one film, won two awards for Meilleur acteur (Best Actor) and Meilleur espoir masculin (Best Male Newcomer). Emmanuelle Devos, who starred in Audiard's last two films (and is easily one of the finest actresses in the business), won the Supporting Actress prize for Xavier Giannoli's À l'origine. Radu Mihăileanu's Le concert was the only other film to win in more than one category (for Music and Sound Design). Clint Eastwood was (again predictably) the winner in the Film étranger (Foreign Film) category for Gran Torino. The big winners are below; the full list of winners is here (in French); the nominees can be found here.

Meilleur film [Best Film]: Un prophète [A Prophet], d. Jacques Audiard
Meilleur réalisateur [Best Director]: Jacques Audiard, Un prophète
Meilleur premier film [Best First Film]: Les beaux gosses [The French Kissers], d. Riad Sattouf
Meilleur film étranger [Best Foreign Film]: Gran Torino, d. Clint Eastwood, USA
Meilleur film documentaire [Best Documentary]: L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot [Henri-George Clouzot's Inferno], d. Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
Meilleur acteur [Best Actor]: Tahar Rahim, Un prophète
Meilleure actrice [Best Actress]: Isabelle Adjani, La journée de la jupe [Skirt Day]
Meilleur acteur dans un second rôle [Supporting Actor]: Niels Arestrup, Un prophète
Meilleure actrice dans un second rôle [Supporting Actress]: Emmanuelle Devos, À l'origine [In the Beginning]
Meilleur espoir masculin [Best Male Newcomer]: Tahar Rahim, Un prophète
Meilleur espoir féminin [Best Female Newcomer]: Mélanie Thierry, Le dernier pour la route [One for the Road]
Meilleur scénario original [Original Screenplay]: Un prophète - Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Nicolas Peufaillit
Meilleur scénario adaptation [Adapted Screenplay]: Mademoiselle Chambon - Stéphane Brizé, Florence Vignon
Meilleure photographie [Best Cinematography]: Stéphane Fontaine, Un prophète

DVD Release Update, 25 February

Included in this DVD update are Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard from Strand, a bunch of Robin Hood films from Sony, Tony Manero from Kino Lorber, Alain Cavalier's Le combat dans l'île from Zeitgeist and Jean Becker's One Deadly Summer [L'été meurtrier] with Isabelle Adjani from a studio I've never heard of called Bayview Films.

- Legend of Witches, 1969, d. Malcolm Leigh, VCI, 27 April
- Malice in Wonderland, 2009, d. Simon Fellows, Magnolia, 27 April, w. Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Nathaniel Parker
- 9 to 5: Days in Porn, 2008, d. Jens Hoffman, Strand Releasing, 4 May, w. Sasha Grey
- The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, 1946, d. Henry Levin, George Sherman, Sony, 11 May
- Legend of the Tsunami Warrior [aka Queens of Langkasuka], 2008, d. Nonzee Nimibutr, Magnet/Magnolia, also on Blu-ray, 11 May
- One Deadly Summer [L'été meurtrier], 1983, d. Jean Becker, Bayview Films, 11 May
- The Prince of Thieves, 1948, d. Howard Bretherton, Sony, 11 May
- Rogues of Sherwood Forest, 1950, d. Gordon Douglas, Sony, 11 May
- Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960, d. Terence Fisher, Sony, 11 May
- Tidal Wave, 2009, d. Yun Je-gyun, Magnet/Magnolia, also on Blu-ray, 11 May
- Iscariot, 2008, d. Miko Lazic, Brink DVD, 18 May, w. Gustaf Skarsgård, Michael Nyqvist
- North Face [Nordwand], 2008, d. Philipp Stölzl, Music Box Films, 18 May, w. Benno Fürmann
- Southern Gothic, 2007, d. Mark Young, IFC Films, 18 May
- Tony Manero, 2008, d. Pablo Larraín, Kino Lorber, 18 May
- Toe to Toe, 2009, d. Emily Abt, Strand Releasing, 8 June
- Antarctica, 2008, d. Yair Hochner, Here! Films, 15 June
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume 7, 2009, d. Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis, Warner, 15 June
- Sex Positive, 2008, d. Daryl Wein, Here! Films, 15 June
- Bluebeard [Barbe bleue], 2009, d. Catherine Breillat, Strand Releasing, 22 June
- Le combat dans l'île, 1962, d. Alain Cavalier, Zeitgeist, 22 June, w. Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant
- Raging Sun, Raging Sky [Rabioso sol, rabioso cielo], 2009, d. Julián Hernández, TLA Releasing, 22 June
- Say Hello to Yesterday, 1971, d. Alvin Rakoff, Scorpion Releasing, 28 June, w. Jean Simmons, Leonard Whiting

Also on the Blu-ray front are individual releases of some of the Mel Brooks titles included in the box set released last year: High Anxiety, History of the World: Part 1 and Robin Hood: Men in Tights on 11 May. Individual releases of Batman Returns, Batman Forever and (cough) Batman & Robin will also be available from Warner on 4 May.

- Apollo 13, 1995, d. Ron Howard, Universal, 13 April
- Elizabeth, 1998, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal, 27 April
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal, 27 April
- Flashbacks of a Fool, 2008, d. Baillie Walsh, Anchor Bay, 25 May
- Spartacus, 1960, d. Stanley Kubrick, Universal, 25 May

White Material, Making Plans for Lena and Rompecabezas at IFC

Though I didn't find any official announcements of such, it looks as if Claire Denis' White Material and Christophe Honoré's Making Plans for Lena [Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser] have landed at IFC Films. BAMcinématek is presenting a three-day spotlight on IFC Films beginning 19 March, and both films are on the line-up along with Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains, Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Johnnie To's Vengeance and Tales from the Golden Age. For those in NYC, both Honoré and star Chiara Mastroianni will be present for a Q&A following the 20 March screening of Making Plans for Lena; this will be the fourth Honoré film that IFC has released following Dans Paris, Les chansons d'amour and La belle personne. More information here. In addition to the films above, IFC did officially announce their acquisition of Puzzle [Rompecabezas], the directorial debut of Natalie Smirnoff who previously worked as an assistant director on Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga and The Holy Girl and casting director on The Headless Woman. Starring the amazing María Onetto, Puzzle was the sole Latin American film in competition at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

Well, Kathryn Bigelow Is Hotter Than James Cameron...

While The Hurt Locker isn't exactly my favorite film of last year, it's the perfect "I'm okay with _____ winning so long as ______ and _______ doesn't." I think that's pretty much how most people are with the Oscar nominees this year. Kathryn Bigelow's war drama took home six BAFTAs today (for those not acronym savvy, it's the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards), setting it as the likely frontrunner for the Best Picture race at the Oscars. Andrea Arnold's wonderful Fish Tank won the prize for Outstanding British Film. The major awards are below; the nominees are here; and the full list of awards are here.

Film: The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow
British Film: Fish Tank, d. Andrea Arnold
Film Not in the English Language: Un prophète [A Prophet], d. Jacques Audiard, France
Animated Film: Up, d. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Leading Actor: Colin Firth, A Single Man
Leading Actress: Carey Mulligan, An Education
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer: Duncan Jones, director, Moon

CriterionForum's Poll of the Best Films of the Aughts

Last July, I posted the results of CriterionForum's user poll of the best films of the 1990s, which placed Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man at the top of the rankings. Last month, they caught up with the 00's, and predictably, it went neck and neck between Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (like so many others). We'll see how things line up in five or so years. Michael Haneke had the most showings on the list, with four of his films representing; he also has claim to the only official 2009 film to make the list as well. Speaking of '00 lists, I had promised a defense/explanation/overview of my own Decade List a while back. I've begun and abandoned it at least three times, and while I have two people barking up my tree in regard to this (you know who you are, and I do thank you), I thought I'd see if that was still of any interest. I would like to complete it, and I'm probably better suited to do so after spending nearly two months away from it. Let me know. The results of the CriterionForum poll are below.

01. In the Mood for Love, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/France
02. Mulholland Drive, d. David Lynch, France/USA
03. Yi yi, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan
04. The Royal Tenenbaums, d. Wes Anderson, USA
05. Punch-Drunk Love, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
06. Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France
07. The New World, d. Terrence Malick, USA
08. There Will Be Blood, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
09. Zodiac, d. David Fincher, USA
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, d. Michel Gondry, USA

11. Spirited Away, d. Hayao Miyazaki, Japan
12. Goodbye, Dragon Inn, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan
13. Caché, d. Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany/Italy
14. Dogville, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland/UK/France/Germany/Netherlands
15. INLAND EMPIRE, d. David Lynch, USA/Poland/France
16. Talk to Her [Hable con ella], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
17. No Country for Old Men, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA
18. Elephant, d. Gus Van Sant, USA
19. Memories of Murder, d. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea
20. The Intruder [L'intrus], d. Claire Denis, France

21. Platform, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong/Japan/France
22. Children of Men, d. Alfonso Cuarón, UK/USA/Spain
23. The Son [Le fils], d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France
24. Before Sunset, d. Richard Linklater, USA
25. Y tu mamá también, d. Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico
26. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, d. Andrew Dominik, USA/Canada
27. Memento, d. Christopher Nolan, USA
28. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile], d. Cristian Mungiu, Romania
29. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, d. Steven Spielberg, USA
30. Grizzly Man, d. Werner Herzog, USA
30. Still Walking, d. Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan

32. 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums], d. Claire Denis, France/Germany
33. A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël], d. Arnaud Desplechin, France
34. Syndromes and a Century, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria
35. Tropical Malady, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy
36. The World, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Japan/France
37. A History of Violence, d. David Cronenberg, USA/Germany
37. The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy
39. Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], d. Olivier Assayas, France
40. The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], d. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain

41. What Time Is It There?, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France
42. Russian Ark, d. Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/Germany
43. Nobody Knows, d. Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan
44. You the Living [Du levande], d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark/Norway/Japan
45. La ciénaga, d. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Spain
46. Millennium Mambo, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France
46. The Piano Teacher [La pianiste], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/France
48. Friday Night [Vendredi soir], d. Claire Denis, France
48. The Gleaners & I [Les glaneurs et la glaneuse], d. Agnès Varda, France
50. Lost in Translation, d. Sofia Coppola, USA/Japan
50. Three Times, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France

52. 2046, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France/Germany
53. Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in], d. Tomas Alfredson, Sweden
54. Miami Vice, d. Michael Mann, USA/Germany
55. The Return, d. Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia
56. The Squid and the Whale, d. Noah Baumbach, USA
57. Lilya 4-ever [Lilja 4-ever], d. Lukas Moodysson, Sweden/Denmark
58. 25th Hour, d. Spike Lee, USA
59. Bad Education [La mala educación], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
60. Amélie [Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain], d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France
60. Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea

62. Adaptation., d. Spike Jonze, USA
63. Code Unknown [Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages], d. Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Romania
64. The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu [Moartea domnului Lăzărescu], d. Cristi Puiu, Romania
65. L'enfant, d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France
66. The Man Who Wasn't There, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA/UK
67. In the City of Sylvia [En la ciudad de Sylvia], d. José Luis Guerín, Spain/France
68. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, d. Wes Anderson, USA
69. Antichrist, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland
69. Birth, d. Jonathan Glazer, USA/Germany

71. WALL•E, d. Andrew Stanton, USA
72. The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow, USA
73. Still Life, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong
73. Who's Camus Anyway?, d. Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Japan
75. Margot at the Wedding, d. Noah Baumbach, USA
76. Woman Is the Future of Man, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea/France
77. Synecdoche, New York, d. Charlie Kaufman, USA
78. demonlover, d. Olivier Assayas, France
79. Kill Bill (Volumes 1 and 2), d. Quentin Tarantino
79. The Man Without a Past [Mies vailla menneisyyttä], d. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/Germany/France

81. Eureka, d. Shinji Aoyama, Japan/France
82. I'm Not There, d. Todd Haynes, USA/Germany
83. Linda Linda Linda, d. Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan
84. Paranoid Park, d. Gus Van Sant, France/USA
85. George Washington, d. David Gordon Green, USA
86. Morvern Callar, d. Lynne Ramsay, UK
87. Ghost World, d. Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany
88. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada [Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada], d. Tommy Lee Jones, USA/France
88. Woman on the Beach, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
90. All the Real Girls, d. David Gordon Green, USA

91. Mysterious Skin, d. Gregg Araki, USA/Netherlands
91. Wendy and Lucy, d. Kelly Reichardt, USA
93. Tokyo Sonata, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan/Netherlands/Hong Kong
94. Pan's Labyrinth [El laberinto del Fauno], d. Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/USA
95. Brand Upon the Brain!, d. Guy Maddin, Canada/USA
95. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le scaphandre et le papillon], d. Julian Schnabel, France/USA
95. Songs from the Second Floor [Sånger från andra våningen], d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Norway/Denmark
98. Café Lumière, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan/Taiwan
98. Innocence, d. Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Belgium/France/UK
98. Pulse, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

Surpringly (or maybe it isn't), only five of the 100 aren't yet on DVD in the US. Though naturally, The White Ribbon and Still Walking are on their way; and Lilya 4-ever, while not for purchase, is available to rent through Netflix, leaving Eureka and In the City of Sylvia as the remaining two.