Jonathan Romney

It’s hard making this list again, ten years after the last time – you feel you want to be faithful to your earlier choices, but what to lose if other films have inspired you since? My only criterion for this list is that it’s entirely to do with my own filmgoing history – these are films that have all revealed something new to me at important moments. There are three new additions. Pierrot le fou replaces Le Mépris, as it’s simply more fun – but I also realised that it was the first Godard I ever saw. Of the two films I’ve discovered in the last decade, Out One was for years my Holy Grail – I thought I’d never see it, and when I did I wasn’t disappointed. It’s still a magnificent blueprint for generating fictions out of the everyday. It impresses me all the more in that even though huge chunks are barely watchable (the theatre sections) it’s nevertheless extraordinary overall. I’m taking a risk on Apichatpong, as I’m not sure what Syndromes will mean in the long term, but I was bowled over when I saw it – I’m always hoping to sight those rare screen phenomena that French critics like to call UFOs, and this film truly is (at the risk of repeating the Joe cliché) the authentic ‘mysterious object’. As for an old favourite, Hellzapoppin is still my desert island film, a crammed encyclopedia of meta-farce that continues to crack me up after all these years. Here’s to Olsen & Johnson, the kid sister and “Mrs Jones!!!”