Roger Ebert's 10 Favorite Movies
Kevin Winter/GettyLegendary film critic Roger Ebert passed away Thursday, at the age of 70, after a long battle with cancer.
Ebert reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years. His reviews were also syndicated in hundreds of newspapers worldwide.
In 2012 the critic compiled his last list of the greatest films of all time.
Here they are below:
"Aguirre, Wrath of God" (Herzog)
"Apocalypse Now" (Coppola)"Citizen Kane" (Welles)"La Dolce Vita" (Fellini) "The General" (Keaton) "Raging Bull" (Scorsese) "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Kubrick) "Tokyo Story" (Ozu) "The Tree of Life" (Malick)"Vertigo" (Hitchcock)
Ebert's most recent list switched in Terrene Malick's "Tree of Life" for Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Dekalog."
Here's what he had to say about each one:
"Aguirre, Wrath of God" (1972)
New Yorker
Chicago Sun-Times:
"'Aguirre' is the most evocative expression of Herzog's genius, and I admire it even more after watching him go through it a shot at a time with Ramin Bahrani a few years ago at Boulder."
"Apocalypse Now" (1979)
"'Apocalypse Now' is a film which still causes real, not figurative, chills to run along my spine, and it is certainly the bravest and most ambitious fruit of Coppola's genius."
"Citizen Kane" (1941)
WSJ:
"Welles gives us a portrait of a gargantuan man of unlimited ambitions and appetites, whose excesses outran his resources."
"La Dolce Vita" (1960)
"A film about a kind of life I dreamed of living, then a film about the life I was living, then about my escape from that life. Now, half a century after its release, it is about the arc of my life, and its closing scene is an eerie reflection of my wordlessness and difficulty in communicating."
"The General" (1920)
"There must be a silent film [on the list], and I consider "The General" his [Buster Keaton's] best."
"Raging Bull" (1980)
"Many would choose 'Taxi Driver' as Scorsese's greatest film, but I believe 'Raging Bull' is his best and most personal, a film he says in some ways saved his life. It is the greatest cinematic expression of the torture of jealousy — his 'Othello.'"
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
"'2001: A Space Odyssey' is likewise a stand-alone monument, a great visionary leap, unsurpassed in its vision of man and the universe."
"Tokyo Story" (1953)
"The older I grow and the more I observe how age affects our relationships, the more I think 'Tokyo Story' has to teach us."
"Vertigo" (1958)
"One of my shifts last time was to replace Hitchcock's "Notorious" with "Vertigo," because after going through both a shot at a time during various campus sessions, I decided that "Vertigo" was, after all, the better of two nearly perfect films."
"The Tree of Life" (2011)
Last year, Ebert added "The Tree of Life" to his list of greatest films over Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" because it is
"... more affirmative and hopeful. I realize that isn't a defensible reasons for choosing one film over the other, but it is my reason, and making this list is essentially impossible, anyway."