Noel Vera

Critic, Businessworld

Phillippines

Voted in the critics’ poll

Voted for

Chimes at Midnight	1966	Orson Welles
Cloud-Capped Star, The	1960	Ritwik Ghatak
Diary of a Country Priest	1951	Robert Bresson
Faust	1926	F. W. Murnau
Late Spring	1949	Ozu Yasujirô
M	1931	Fritz Lang
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind	1984	Miyazaki Hayao
Kaagaz Ke Phool	1959	Guru Dutt
Sherlock Jr	1924	Buster Keaton
Three Years Without God	1977	Mario O'Hara

Comments

I look at how well the filmmaker translates his passion, at the intensity of said passion, and listen to the feeling in my gut that tells me: “This is one.” Guru Dutt’s film maudit, a titanic box-office flop, is one of the best films ever about a filmmaker’s passion for his work. From Miyazaki, one of the few science-fiction films to deal with ecological systems and the environment – arguably the greatest animated film ever made. From Ghatak, a neorealist masterwork – one of the most heartrending depictions ever of female oppression. And from Mario O’Hara, the rare film from a victimized nation (in this case the Philippines) that strives to understand, perhaps even forgive, the invader.