(((Adina))) you make a number of good points in your comments, I noticed that every one of the filmmakers you mentioned is known for his striking visual style…Ozu and Kurosawa of course, and also Kubrick who started his career as an award-winning staff photographer for Look magazine, and Hitchcock whose last four decades of creating fantastic images were informed by the first decade; working in silent films.

Sergei Eisenstein’s pictures, too, are a treat for the eyes and the ears and the spirit…he considered cinema the most perfect synthesis of all the arts. Potemkin, October, Strike and, especially, Nevsky and Ivan – wow – they are majestic symphonies, dynamic and stirring but also nuanced and poetic. Thanks (((Adina))) for bringing our attention to this great director whose works will be appreciated by everyone interested in history and the arts.

It’s also a fascinating movie looking at his historical context. Alfred Hitchcock was in many ways an outlier in the old studio system, having a near unprecedented level of directorial control (to the extent where he along with John Ford were influential in the rise of Auteur Theory) and an ability to push the boundaries of censorship to the very limit. Yet despite being a misfit who never quite fit in with the old order, Hitchcock was still very much a figure of Old Hollywood with his sensibilities and affectations influenced by that environment. In this context, Frenzy is a fascinating movie – a late-career, post-Hays Code exercise that, while considerably nastier than his previous work, still seems rather quaint compared to what was happening elsewhere in Western cinema at the time. Definately check it out if you haven’t seen it.

I agree entirely on Kurosawa – I would actually go so far as to say that I prefer his contemporary films to his samurai epics (as great as they are as well). Let me also nominate Yasujiro Ozu’s That Night’s Wife. Ozu tends to get associated with his late career ‘family dramas about generational conflict’ films, but it’s easy to forget that he had a very diverse filmography, especially in his early period.

For Kubrick, I would replace Barry Lyndon, which is a very famous movie that was nominated for Best Picture with The Killing, which was dismissed as a b-movie at the time of its release and even today tends to be largely forgotten among his fans (no Kubrick boxsets that I know of contain it). But it’s easily his first great film and in my opinion stands with his more famous films.

Maybe because the original is 20 times better

Jackie Brown is a overlooked movie, as it was snubbed because it wasn’t a Pulp Fiction 2.

Agreed that Andrew Garfield doesn’t have the range to carry a Scorsese film, I think the film might have worked better if they gave Adam Driver the lead, a much more versatile actor. Even with that the movie will never be one of Scorsese’s best.

I love After Hours, too, and it would have made more sense on this list than Silence. After Hours was made in tandem with King of Comedy (two dark, angsty comedies filmed on the streets of NYC) and it won Scorsese an award at Cannes for best director but it’s mentioned relatively little in conversations about his works. Silence is only four or five years old and, frankly, Andrew Garfield – with all his Anthony Perkins mannerisms – is the weakest protagonist out of all Scorsese’s films.

You’re right, it’s funny that the author of this list thinks highly enough of Hitchcock to place one of his movies at #1 yet doesn’t remember that Family Plot came several years afterward. Well, any list with Frenzy at the top gets my recommendation.

Yes, definitely After Hours. A very fun film to watch. I don’t know why nobody I talk to has seen that film.