TOP 500 LETTERBOXD

Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

1988 film by Terence Davies

2003 film directed by Lars von Trier

1973 film by Nicolas Roeg

Based on one of the most important and popular works of Portuguese literature, Doomed Love was recently revealed to North American audiences as one of de Oliveira’s greatest works. Closely following Camilo Castelo Branco’s eponymous novel from 1862, de Oliveira creates a radical and unprecedented fusion of theatre, literature and cinema, which, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, is rivaled only by von Stroheim’s Greed. In this doleful tale of forbidden passion, the doomed love of the title belongs to Teresa Albuquerque and Simão Botelho, whose feuding aristocratic families pave the way for a deadly ménage- à-trois when another woman steps in to take Teresa’s place. De Oliveira credits Straub-Huillet’s Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach as one of the major influences on the film, which is told through a bold series of tableaux vivants. Like the other works in his “Tetralogy,” Doomed Love makes great use of omniscient narration and a host of distancing effects (static camera, lack of close-ups), “paring things down to the unspectacular, so that when something dramatic does flare up . . . the result is tremendous” (Elliott Stein). The film was originally shot on 16mm and made for Portuguese TV where it unsurprisingly floundered and was subjected to scorn. But its mythic status grew and when a 35mm blow-up was theatrically released some time later, this film maudit was hailed as a European masterpiece, ensuring that de Oliveira was “recognized as one of the great modern filmmakers” (Randal Johnson). No cinephile can afford to miss this date with Doomed Love. (Cinematheque Ontario)

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy.

After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear strike.

A patient observation on the adventures a group of three young girls spending their three-week summer vacation at a small village, a quotidian that includes cooking, excursions, playing cards and going out with guys, enjoying the simple pleasures life has to offer.

1986 film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.

Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

Kanji is a poor peasant widower who struggles to earn a living for his daughter and himself and to pay off his father-in-law's debts.

1974 biographical film directed by Peter Watkins

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer.

Unni is the last male heir of a decaying feudal family in rural Kerala. His inability to accept the socio-economic changes of a new society causes him to gradually withdraw into isolation and paranoia.

The epic saga continues as Luke Skywalker, in hopes of defeating the evil Galactic Empire, learns the ways of the Jedi from aging master Yoda. But Darth Vader is more determined than ever to capture Luke. Meanwhile, rebel leader Princess Leia, cocky Han Solo, Chewbacca, and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are thrown into various stages of capture, betrayal and despair.

Based on the novel of the same name by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. About the childhood of the famous Ukrainian film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who was born on the ancient lands of Chernihiv, along the banks the Desna. The film consists of two parts. The first is the world shown through the impressions of the six-year-old Sashko. The second is the recollections and reasoning of Sashko, now an elderly colonel who liberates his native village during the war.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser (Bruno S.), who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.