Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time

Austin and Andrew explore the list of all lists, discussing the good, the bad, and the ugly of the greatest films of all time.

Austin Lugo: You're mad that you slept in.

Andrew Harp: I'm pissed off that I slept in though.

Austin Lugo: What have you been watching? What's been on the agenda for Andrew? All right,

Andrew Harp: well first, before we talk about that, we have to talk about something else. Did you see the sight and sound pole? I

Austin Lugo: don't think. Tell me more. What? I don't think so. Explain it to me.

Andrew Harp: Maybe I, do you know what this is? Oh my God. See, this is why.

This is why. No, this is why you need me. I'm the, I'm the, I got my hand on the pulse of the movie community. You know, the movie, uh, the Sight and Sound poll is, um, the, um, poll that's conducted every 10 years by Sight and Sound, which is a British film magazine, I believe. And so they did it again this year, and I think with the, and you know, it's just a hundred greatest films of all time.

They pulled 1,639 critic. Programs, curators, archivists and academics, and they submit a top 10 ballot of movies. They, whatever deserve, they think, deserve to be on the list, like in

Austin Lugo: all of cinematic history. Yeah,

Andrew Harp: just every movie. They also did a director's one as well, but the big one, of course, is the one with all the, like I said, critics, programmers, curators, all those people.

So for a while it was Citizen Kane was number one. And last year, for the first time ever, vertigo overtook Citizens Kane. Oh shit. For number one. So it was like Vertigos and Kane. Can you guess what number one is? It is actually not Vertigo or Citizen Kane. It's not

Austin Lugo: Vertigo or Citizen Kane.

Andrew Harp: No. Is. No, but I will say the movie is directed by a French person.

No, sorry. Well, I, I kind of gave it away a little bit and actually the, this person's not French, but, um, I was gonna say they are, um, it's a woman, it's a woman director. Oh,

Austin Lugo: is it, uh, an Agnes Farda film? No. No.

Andrew Harp: I don't even know if she's on the list. And we'll talk about it. You need to look at, it's not even on the list.

I bet she's not I, oh no. You know what? No, I'm wrong. She's gotta be on the list. Number 14, Cleo from Friday to seven. Yeah.

Austin Lugo: Yeah, she's on the list. So it's a French woman. Not

Andrew Harp: French. Sorry, not French. No, but it's a woman. It's a woman. And it is a movie that you've seen and I, but it's actually a movie that I

Austin Lugo: haven't seen.

Give me a minute. I wanna, I wanna think about this. I don't

Andrew Harp: think you'll be able to guess it, but I'm giving you the chance to guess it.

Austin Lugo: Give me like a jeopardy amount of time. It's to come up with an answer.

Andrew Harp: All right. She is a Belgian woman. I'll give you that.

Austin Lugo: Belgian woman.

Andrew Harp: I don't think that helps at all.

Austin Lugo: I don't know. I I got nothing. Who is it? It's a seventies movie. It's a seventies movie. I have no idea. What is it? What's the

Andrew Harp: movie? It's a G and Dale Dielman. Really? Yeah. That was number one. It went up 34 spots. Holy shit.

Austin Lugo: Huh?

Andrew Harp: You still haven't seen that movie? No, I still haven't seen it. It's, I mean, it is oh three and a half hours long, so I just haven't really gotten around to it.

It's not only three and

Austin Lugo: a half hours long. It's three and a half hours long where nothing happens. I know.

Andrew Harp: I'm excited to watch it though. I mean, I've been wanting to watch it for a while. I saw

Austin Lugo: that on the Criterion Collection. , like put all the films on their, uh, streaming service for, I don't know how long it's gonna be up there, but if there was ever a time to watch a three and a half hour movie about a woman just walking around.

Andrew Harp: Yeah. Yeah. It's, I I, I kinda like, it's number one. You know, the, the list itself, I mean, is pretty boiler plate. You should look it up.

Austin Lugo: I'm gonna do this right now. Okay. Sight and Sound. 2022. Complete list. Sean Diek. That's really, it's a good film. It's not a bad film at. But is it the greatest film

Andrew Harp: ever, the Vertigos and Kane Tokyo story?

2001. Boreal. Uh, Mulholland Drive. I like that. Bo Tra is number seven. We, that was a movie we were gonna watch, um, for the show before we went on to hate us. Yeah, I mean,

Austin Lugo: that was a good chance to, I mean, we're not doing it next time, but, right. Yeah,

Andrew Harp: yeah. But it's a good movie. I'm still gonna watch it sometime.

Yeah. I like that Mulholland Drive is eight. I love that. I saw a man with a movie camera for the first time not too long ago. That was good. It's a great movie. A really great movie. Um, not a lot of like westerns though, I believe I've heard that there's not a lot of Spanish language directors. Mm-hmm. in the mix going on.

Um, actually, you know what there is glean the Gleaners and eyes on the list, so there is more than one I gonna spare in a movie. On the list, there's at least two, maybe more. There's a lot of

Austin Lugo: Hitchcock movies on here. It's.

Andrew Harp: Yeah. Hitchcock has the most movies on there with four. Wow. Which, I don't know if that's necessary, honestly.

Even though those four movies are indispensable, it's kind of a little bit

Austin Lugo: much, I'm surprised. City Lights is Modern Times on here cuz City lights is tied for 36. Usually Modern times is above. I don't even see modern times on here.

Andrew Harp: The modern times is on there. It's like 81 on the letterbox list I'm looking at.

Yeah. City Lights is 36. So it's up above modern times.

Austin Lugo: I mean, there's some great, I've seen most of these kinda wish stalker was higher, but I'm glad I made the list.

Andrew Harp: According to Letterbox, I've seen 52% of these

Austin Lugo: movies. Nice. I think it here maybe go, maybe I should get a letterbox, uh, should I just look up Sight and Sound?

Andrew Harp: Yeah. A British Film Institute look up the British Film Institute account and they have a list on there. A lot of Bergman movies got kicked off the list. That's bull. , but I mean there's still some on there. Like Persona is the highest one on there.

Austin Lugo: I've seen 65% of these movies. Wow.

Andrew Harp: You've seen a lot of them.

Wow. I've seen a good deal. I've watched so many movies, but you know, there's like a considerable amount of the canon that I haven't watched or whatever you can call it that canon, whatever the fuck. Some good

Austin Lugo: stuff close up. We just talked about that three days ago. We're gonna show at the theater soon.

That'll be fun. Have some, a movie, lovely movie. I wish Playtime was higher, but you know, playtime's my favorite. So the Night of the Hunter, my, uh, Jimmy actually just bought me that movie for my birthday. So I have it on Blu-ray. Uh, no, I have Criter. I had the Criter. You've seen it? Never seen it, but I have the criterion.

Ooh, is it good?

Andrew Harp: So good. Okay. I love that movie,

Austin Lugo: dude. I was gonna actually play it at the theater once everything's set up, so, oh my God, that movies so good. Looks so good. Portrait of a Lady on Fire Number 30. That seems a little high. There are like four

Andrew Harp: movies that came out in the 2010s I think are on the list.

Wow. Parasite Portrait, lady on Fire. Get out in Moonlight, get out all these movies I like, but I'm good.

Austin Lugo: Yeah, I'm surprised. Get Out. Made Top hundred. Really, I mean, get outs.

Andrew Harp: It was like nu it was like number 100.

Austin Lugo: So it's like just made the list. Okay. Ali Furs the Soul. I rewatched that movie recently. Have you ever seen that movie?

No. You should watch it. It's, it's really good. No, I should, it's like a really quiet, sad, kind of depressing film. You gotta be.

Andrew Harp: I like Fast Bender. I've, I've seen Petrov. vCAN. Okay. And that's a good movie. Yeah. You know, godfather is on the list, but Godfather Duke got kicked out. It's on the list.

Austin Lugo: Godfather isn't on the list.

Oh

Andrew Harp: no, it is, well, godfather is, but Godfather two isn't on the list. Wow. Which kind of weird. That movie was like in the 30 ranges. Yeah, like in the first, in the list from 2012, but then it's just off. Wow.

Austin Lugo: Third Man, we watched, we watched actually a couple of these for the podcast. We watched quite a few of

Andrew Harp: these.

The general

Austin Lugo: is my neighbor, Toto, the only animated film on. Spirit aways on there, but it's also Studio Poli

Andrew Harp: Tedros Higher than Spirited Away though, which I like. I don't know about that. I think Tedros better. I, no, Ted's better than Spirited Away. It's more beautiful movie. It's more, I mean, honestly, you know,

Austin Lugo: they're like born in the same, I'm always partial the House movie castle.

That's just, I'm not, we've, we

Andrew Harp: talked, we had a whole podcast about it. I know, I know. We had, we helped, we had a whole episode for an. .

Austin Lugo: I get ya. I feel ya. Wow. So there's two David Lynch movies on here. That's great. Good for

Andrew Harp: him. I'm sure if you look, you can see that, you know, a lot of, uh, directors have been, uh, not on there.

Well this

Austin Lugo: is always kind of this, it's very English heavy, which is fine. But once upon a time in the West, really over, uh, good band. The Ugly,

Andrew Harp: I haven't seen Once Upon a Time, but I will

Austin Lugo: soon. I don't think it's as good as the good and band, the Ugly, you know, it's Sergio Leon, so it's still great.

Andrew Harp: Besides that movie and the Searchers, I think those are the only two westerns on the list as far as I can tell.

Austin Lugo: I think you're right.

Andrew Harp: Yeah. What do you think, Austin? Good lists, bad lists?

Austin Lugo: I mean, you know, these kind of things. They are is, you said, very kind of standard what's supposed to be kind of run of the mill. So there's nothing really on this list that surprises me other than maybe like, get. The fact that John Gillman, uh, is at number one does surprise me.

I think it's cool. I mean, I, I think it's, you know, good for, good for them. It's not, I would've never guessed that would've gone to number one, uh, because personally I don't. Yeah, I would. I think that would've been hard. I do, I don't love it. I think it's a good film, but the thing about the film is it's purposely difficult to watch.

Like it's, it's supposed to be that way. So like, it's. It's not an enjoyable experience. It's not supposed to be though, so I guess that's fine. Look, I wanna be number one on my list, but that's fine.

Andrew Harp: I, I think it's more interesting than Citizen Kane or Vertigo being number

Austin Lugo: one. Oh, no, I, I agree. I think the fact that Citizen Kane's gone down is great.

I think, you know, as we said, there's way too much English stuff on here. There's really

Andrew Harp: no, no Malach, no Terrence Malach, no, uh, no high, no high. And. That should be on the list.

Austin Lugo: They have Urso on here though, don't they? They have, uh,

Andrew Harp: they have like, I think the highest one I've seen is like, uh, seven Samurai and uh, Russian one's on there as well.

So there is, but honestly like high and low I think is about as good as seven Samurai, if not better than Russian one. I think

Austin Lugo: high and low might be as best film. It was my favorite. Yeah, I, I, I, I

Andrew Harp: love high and low blade runners on there, which yeah, that's a really good movie, , but don't

Austin Lugo: know honestly if we're gonna go Ridley Scott, I would rather go alien than Blade Runner,

Andrew Harp: honestly.

Yeah. I mean, that's debatable. I don't think Alien is on here. I think you're right. I think you, you might be right there. I think maybe aliens should go in that place. I think that makes more sense to me as. . I don't know. For some reason Blade Runner is more ubiquitous lately, recently, because

Austin Lugo: they had the second one maybe is

Andrew Harp: why, just all the cyber punk shit.

Yeah. And the second movie and all that stuff. Goodfellows is on there, but I think I'd prefer Casino on there in its place. But that's just me. Like obviously Goodfellow's gonna be on the list, very celebrated movie. But I, I prefer Casino.

Austin Lugo: I understand why this is on the list, but if I'm gonna take a, uh, a Scorsese movie, I would much rather have a king of comedy or, uh, after hours.

Wolfel. Wall Street isn't on the list. It is on the list. It isn't? Yeah, that's fine. I mean,

Andrew Harp: I don't know. I think I would rather have Wolfel Wall Street on there over like Get out or, yeah. Even like Moonlight maybe. Uh, I don't know if there's a movie I wanna rewatch right now. It's gonna be Wolfel, wall Street.

Not Moonlight, but I like Moonlight. It's gonna be, I actually, did I

Austin Lugo: tell you I watched that rewatch that movie recently. What movie? Uh, Wolf of Wall Street.

Andrew Harp: I think I

Austin Lugo: probably saw like a letter box review. Went through this phase where I was rewatching a bunch of movies because I was trying to find something to do while I worked.

And um, and so I was just going by like the order in which I had seen it. So I, I went through quite a few, you know, I Rewatched Memento, I rewatched Goodfellas, I rewatched Wolf of Wall Street and good movies. All

Andrew Harp: good movies.

Austin Lugo: Yeah. I hadn't seen Wolf of Wall Street since it originally came out, so it,

Andrew Harp: I think you didn't like any of these movies.

Which movies? The ones

Austin Lugo: you just listed that I re-watch?

Andrew Harp: Yeah, well you were, I think I remember from your reviews you were just like, yeah, I dunno.

Austin Lugo: My opinion on Memento went down quite a bit because even though, like originally, you know, I kind of love like the, the storytelling of it, I found on the rewatch that.

There's kind of like a lack of empathy in the film. Like it's, it's just a little too cynic for me. Goodfellas still good, but when it came to Wolf of Wall Street, I did enjoy it, but I did think it was a little too, which I get it's right's supposed to be kind of over the top and that whole thing, but honestly, I don't think it needed to be as long as it.

I do love the story of kind of, um, Jordan Belford, is that his name? Yeah, Jordan Belford. Yeah. Yeah. I think Marqui says he does a good job of kind of telling the story of this tragic character, which I think is often overlooked when we kind of talk about Wolf of Wall Street. Like, you know, we kind of always talk about kind of just like the crazy shenanigans he gets into.

That's the

Andrew Harp: dumb guy view of that movie, obviously. Yeah. Like to be like, yo, this movie's epic. It's my favorite movie of all time. And it's like, but it's like they're really, honestly, for me, the parts that stick out of the sad moments, it's like that scene where I think he's like trying to drive or something like that.

Right. And he gets into an accident with his family. That scene's sad. It's pathetic.

Austin Lugo: My, one of my favorite scenes in the movie is that very last scene, which I had forgotten about until I re-watched it, which is where he's selling, because I always thought the last scene was when he is there playing tennis at the jail.

I'm like, oh, like he just fucking gets away with it and like that's how everything ends. But that's not the last scene. The last scene is the scene after that, and which he's selling a pin and like this art auditorium. I remember that too. It's a super depressing scene like, . It's fucking awful cuz it's this guy who, you know, had everything.

And despite all that, like, he's kind of back here at the beginning, but his life is just super like, like despite having all this money and all this shit, it's this really poignant moment. But again, if I'm gonna watch a Scorsese film personally, I'm gonna go with after hours can't comedy before I go with like a Goodfellas or Casino.

But with Fall Street, still good. I mean it's, well, you haven't seen Casino. I haven't seen Casino. I didn't say casino. Say Good fellows. I still make Sing. Casino. You should watch Casino. I should watch Casino. I know you love it. I'm a big fan. I'll watch it. I mean, you know, score says he is always great.

What Score says he up to, has he got anything new going on? I think

Andrew Harp: he's uh, working on that ab adaptation of that one

Austin Lugo: book. Yes. Something, flower, moon, something. Yeah. Killers of the Flower. Killers of the Flower Moon, right? Is that what it's called? Yep. Killers of the Flower Moon. You're right.

Andrew Harp: I listened to the audiobook of.

It's a, it's, it's a non-fiction. Is it good? I recommend the book. It's a really good book. It's an, it is a good piece of reporting. Who's it written by? You know, a journalist, reporter, non-fiction guy? It's not, it's not a fiction book. It just tells a story about how, I forget which state it is, but it's some state, like in the southwest Oklahoma, where like it's basically, it tells a story of how like there's like an Indian reservation and then it turns out I think there's oil under.

And so all these Indians start mysteriously dying. Hmm. That's just basically the story to kind of start off. It's a very sad and very, uh, bad, but it's a very good

Austin Lugo: book. That sounds like a good read.

Andrew Harp: Yeah, I recommend it. You probably read it pretty quickly. I, I listened to the audio book and

Austin Lugo: you know, it was good.

I recently read, you should read this book. I want to get the name right because there's gonna be a lot of like variations. So let me see if I can, so I originally read, uh, the biography of Buster Keaton called Buster Keaton, a film. By James Curtis. It's pretty long as the audiobook. It's like 30 hours. So that's like 500 pages.

Yeah, something like that. 400, 500 pages. You know, I'm a huge fan of biographies. It's not as good as the LBJ series. It's not good. Robert a Carro, but is a very good biography. It's incredibly well-written, incredibly well researched, like it goes into like well into his early life, like from like the day he's fucking, his parents are born, which funny enough, his parents are from Terre Haute, Indiana.

Okay. . Yeah. But of course, by the time ER Keaton was born, they were traveling like vaudeville. Kind of vaudeville. Yeah. They did like vaudeville stuff. Right, right, right. It's just a truly incredible story of triumph. And then also it gets really fucking sad once you get past like the first third of the book.

Right? Yeah. Because by the time he is 30, like the rest of his life is kind of depressing. Yeah. It's kind of. Part of it is his fault because he does become like a drunk for a while and has like some issues with alcohol and he sleeps around a bit. He's a bit of a ladies man, but it's very clearly a large part the fault of because what differentiates Buster Keaton from the other Silent era filmmakers like Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd is Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin both owned their own production companies.

They started their own production. C. . And so they had complete control, but Buster Keaton never did that. So he was always under a production company. And even though originally the general and the navigator and like his, you know, big famous early shorts and features were all under a company called the Buster Kean Production Company.

He actually didn't own any part of that production company. So he spent basically, you know, after the general was made, I think it was after the general, he spent the rest of his career kind of just being traded off between studio. Just kind of like struggling to find work. He was not good with his money at all, so, you know, he is like constantly just like scraping by and it sucks.

Yeah, because you know, you have one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, right? The generals are on the top a hundred list and by the time he is 30 years old, he almost never makes another film because he's just, no one really gives them the option. That's a great read. Uh, everyone listening should definitely give it a read.

There's like

Andrew Harp: a book that came out earlier this year that here was good called Cameraman Buster Keaton, the Donna Cinema in the Invention of the 20th Century. That might be another good one.

Austin Lugo: Yeah, I remember this book coming out and it is on my list, so I haven't actually read that many biographies about filmmakers or kind of the film world in general.

I don't know why it's been a blind spot. Most of my biographies have been mostly kind of more historical figures. But having read the Bus Keaton one, just a really enjoyable experience just to kind of see the world through Buster's eyes and the development of film through Buster Kean is, it's kind of weird because, you know, he is, he's kind of, uh, Busa.

Kean is a character kind of stuck in silent films and you can tell by like the way he told his stories, like that's just the kind of films he knew how to make. And so I think that was also part of it is he just, he could never really figure out how to. Acts with talking. And even when he did his BOD Bill stuff, like most of his stuff was, there was no talking in it.

Like that's just like his shtick. So I don't know, give it a read. It's sad, but endearing and definitely worth it. I don't

Andrew Harp: have a lot to report on this week. I watched all three Herald and Kumar movies. I'm not gonna discuss those. They're okay. Okay. The first two. All right. And then the third one's bad. But anyway, I did watch a two different Adam Curtis series.

I watched. Can't Get You Outta My Head and a Trauma Zone. I like Adam Curtis. He's like a British documentarian and filmmaker. His style is very, uh, specific. His documentaries use a ton of archival footage for the most part, and he focuses in a lot on like, kind of like the history of the 20th century.

He's interested in like individualism versus collectivism, the history of certain countries like the us, Britain, Russia, and China. Can't get you outta my head as kind of like a documentary that's all over the place. It kind of has like this spastic characters that he kind of like flows through from all over the world.

I, I like. It's really good. It's all, all really all over the place. But if you're looking for something that just is like, he also uses pop music a lot or, and ambient music a lot in his, in his movies as well. Okay. And he has like a very nice voice. I don't know, it's kinda hard to describe his style. It's kind of a, a very specific style.

But he has a new one out that came out earlier this year called Trauma Zone that was really interesting, where there's no music. He doesn't include like extra music. He has no narration. It's just him using archive footage and texts on screen to basically tell a story from 1985 to 1999, basically the fall of like the Soviet Union in communism and democracy in the.

and that area. Wow. So they go through, you know, just, you know, Boris Yeltsin and the, the documentary ends basically with the introduction of, uh, Vladimir Putin. And it's very intense. Curtis uses archival footage that does include violence, like does include like people getting killed and stuff like that.

But yeah, just like the story of like the country of that country and that area is just unbelievable. Like, it's just kind of insane that that happened not that long ago. And I mean, I would highly recommend it. Both series are like seven hours long and it sounds like a lot of time. . But because of the way that he makes his series, the time kind of slips away pretty much.

Cuz you can kind of just like really kind of sink into kind of like the effect that that Curtis creates.

Austin Lugo: Dope. We talked a little bit about him last week and I said I was gonna watch, well, no, we ended up saying I wasn't gonna watch it cause this stuff is pretty,

Andrew Harp: uh, if there's one Adam Curtis thing everyone should watch.

It's probably Hypernormalization, which is like three hours long. It's like a movie. Okay.

Austin Lugo: It's good. I wish I'd watched more movies this week. I was so gungho about watching our movies this week. I got through the Batman, Doogie. I was like, I was gonna, I was gonna watch other stuff and then here we are, another Saturday and those, those the only movies I watched.

That's fine. I did watch a lot more Better Call Saul. I am almost through the whole second season. I think it's a lot better than the first season. Okay. That's good. I think all the stuff with Mike is great. It's the best stuff. Honestly. They should have just made the show about him. Yeah, he's good. Like there's entire episodes that are just Mike.

It's the best. And like those were some of the best episodes of Breaking Bad too. Honestly, like Mike is one of the best characters and I love him. And I think my biggest complaint with Better Call Saul is it takes, we're still not there yet. He doesn't do anything illegal. Like there's no like illegal stuff.

Like that's what, that's what made better Call Saul great, right? Cause he like knew all like the little, like he knows guy who knows a guy. Right, but like at this point he's still like, he's just doing like regular lawyer shit. So I'm still enjoying it. It's well written. It's funny, Bob Odenkirk is great in it, but I'm really waiting for the illegal shit to go down, which I know happens eventually, but I wish it would just kind of get to it.

I mean,

Andrew Harp: I guess that's pretty much it. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, I think, I

Austin Lugo: think that's fine. You know, I said I was gonna go see Bones and all last week. That's fine. Like right after this conversa, but I didn't go see it. Whatever. I'm kind of disappointed I did that. Maybe I'll go this weekend. We'll see.

Yeah, whatever. Thank you for listening to the show. Yeah. And uh, until next time, thank you.