Documenting changes to my list of Favorites of All-Time or "Great Films I Love" that inagurated this thread, based on viewings from the past nine months. A title I had simply failed to list due to oversight is Orson Welles's Othello, still my favorite movie based on a Shakespeare play. One film is being removed from the list: the butchered-by-Hollywood The Magnificent Ambersons. I have to own up to the fact that, as it exists, this excellent film is compromised by the footage that was deleted and destroyed by the Studio. My being familiar via research with the content of that footage and the absolute brilliance of most of what's left cannot obscure the fact that the film as it exists feels incomplete and that the coarse shortening of a couple of scenes make me angry.
Excellent films I've watched in the past months that may merit inclusion in the future: Wanda (USA, 1970), 2046 (China, 2004), Lady of Musashino (Japan, 1951), Funeral Parade of Roses (Japan, 1969), and Jacques Tati's color version of Jour de Fete.
New Inclusions:
MOI, UN NOIR (1959).
My favorite of Jean Rouch's made-in-Africa movies mixing aspects of documentary and fiction films. Unexpectedly funny. Will I ever get to see it again?
LA NOIRE DE... (1965).
Ousmane Sembene's debut feature is both a very astute political film about colonialism and a moving character study. Also known as "Black Girl"
MOUCHETTE (1967)
Robert Bresson's de-romanticizes rural France in this companion to Au Hasard Balthazar. Highly allegorical and beautifully photographed.
MELO (1986)
Alan Resnais' is my favorite living French director and his adaptation of a Henry Bernstein play is absolutely perfect. Compulsively addicting menage-a-trois involving neurotic musicians circa 1926 Paris.
THE CORPORATION (2003)
Brilliantly conceived, magnificently edited Canadian doc about the most powerful contemporary institution. Entertaining and edifying.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)
I've written a lot already about this masterful visualization of Charlie Kaufman's best script, which concerns aspects of longing and memory rarely treated with such insight and nuance. Watched it at theatre thrice and it still doesn't seem like that's enough.