There are very few directors I would bother berating, since the level of talent necessary to appear among these ranks, or to even get a film made, far exceeds my own as an independent filmmaker. But honestly, for me Mendes is literally the worst director in all of cinema history. Just stop making films, Sam.

For all its melodrama and grand gestures, Baz Luhrmann's masterpiece Australia consummates his genuine faith in beauty and romanticism, no less his national pride for Australia. As a litmus test for the cynical, this film can only age gracefully for certain of us as we mature into an acceptance of our yearnings for beauty and fulfillment. I'm surprised it's not included here.

Punk rocker/murder balladier Nick Cave sent his characteristic obsessions with Old vs. New Testament, and blood-soaked redemption, straight into this beautifully shot genre Western.

Errol Morris' perfected documentary filmmaking style was used to good effect here with amazing restraint, given that the Vietnam-era subject was (and still is) contemporaneous with the conflicts in Iraq.

Film scholars should competently recognize that this, the greatest of Errol Morris' documentaries, evolved the form. It was audacious (and remains infrequent) to pair an unsensationalized documentary with artful cinematography and music, where nothing less than epic cinema is in mind.

Where the Qatsi trilogy had a relatively academic agenda, this further development by Ron Fricke of environmental/experimental cinema seems to have appealed most to Birkenstocked patrons of Mother Earth. The film is not the pinnacle of its form (veering dangerously close to New Age sheen), but it goes to beautiful places.

If "The Last Temptation of Christ" was the consummation of what Martin Scorsese does, this is the pinnacle of what he can do as a traditional filmmaker. Every component of moviemaking is drawn to perfection here. My doubts are melancholy and earnest that Hollywood may never again create this kind of film on such a large budget and epic scale.

When you remove the filmmaker from the film (which is important in an Oliver Stone production), you get a story about a great human leader with greatly human flaws. Robert Richardson reached his pinnacle as a cinematographer in this perfect balance of experimental camera and attentive narrative.

Much less a tragedy of capital punishment than a meditation on the mystical nature of music in nature, and the way that an innocent soul may hear it. Bjork brilliantly channeled the musique-concrete of her endemic composing style into a traditional dramatic context, and Lars von Trier's Dogme 95 process found a lush, romantic elegance in this pinnacle of his style.

This is the consummation of what Martin Scorsese does. He didn't need to make a single film after this, but he did, and he will, and I'm always first in line.

A war movie where political war is incidental, this Terrence Malick pinnacle confronts good and evil within nature, never overlooking the existence of God and never turning to combat as a process to entertain.

Without being abstract or avant-garde, this is a dramatically new and better way to tell a story using moving pictures. It is a traditional narrative but a radically patient and environmental art that services the narrative with sensual intuition.

If the world were wiped out tomorrow, there is but one film that would have faithfully depicted not only the physical reality of human existence (past-tense), but also its philosophical place.

I'm always amused by the lengths to which viewers/reviewers go avoiding the Catholic heart of this film. My favorite shot in the film is the "pizza" scene around the time when Cage offers a slice to Arquette. In a highly stylized moment, the camera jump cuts into a trinity of shots. Brilliant.