Every ten years, film jour­nal Sight and Sound con­ducts a world­wide sur­vey of film crit­ics to decide which films are con­sid­ered the best ever made. Start­ed in 1952, the poll is now wide­ly regard­ed as the most impor­tant and respect­ed out there.

And the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus for a long time was that the mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane by Orson Welles (born 100 years ago today, by the way) is the best of the best. The film topped the list for five decades from 1962 until 2002. Then in 2012, per­haps out of Kane fatigue, Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go mus­cled its way to the top.

That’s what the crit­ics think. But what about the film­mak­ers?

Begin­ning in 1992, Sight and Sound start­ed to poll famed direc­tors about their opin­ions. Peo­ple like Mar­tin Scors­ese, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Mike Leigh and Michael Mann. So what is the best movie ever made accord­ing to 358 direc­tors polled in 2012? Kane? Ver­ti­go? Per­haps Jean Renoir’s bril­liant Rules of the Game, the only movie to appear in the top ten for all sev­en crit­ics polls? No.

Instead, the top prize goes to Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry.

It’s a sur­pris­ing, an enlight­ened, choice. Ozu’s work is miles away from the flash of Kane and the psy­cho­sex­u­al weird­ness of Ver­ti­go. Tokyo Sto­ry is a gen­tle, nuanced por­trait of a fam­i­ly whose bonds are slow­ly, inex­orably being frayed by the demands of mod­ern­iza­tion. The movie’s emo­tion­al pow­er is restrained and cumu­la­tive; by the final cred­its you’ll be over­whelmed both with a Bud­dhist sense of the imper­ma­nence of all things and a strong urge to call your moth­er.

But per­haps the rea­son film­mak­ers picked Tokyo Sto­ry of all the oth­er cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces out there is because of Ozu’s unique approach to film. Since the days of D. W. Grif­fith, almost every film­mak­er under the sun, even cin­e­mat­ic rebels like Jean-Luc Godard, fol­lowed some basic con­ven­tions of the form like con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing, the 180-degree rule and match­ing eye­lines. Ozu dis­card­ed all of that. Instead, he con­struct­ed a high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage revolv­ing around match cuts and rig­or­ous­ly com­posed shots. His film form was rad­i­cal but his sto­ries were uni­ver­sal. That is the para­dox of Ozu. You can see the trail­er of the movie above.

Cit­i­zen Kane does make num­ber two on the list but the film is tied with anoth­er for­mal­ly rig­or­ous mas­ter­piece – Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Next on the list is per­haps the best movie ever about mak­ing a movie – Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8 ½. And Ozu’s film might be num­ber one, but Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la is the only film­mak­er to have two movies on the list – The God­fa­ther and Apoc­a­lypse Now. And that’s no mean feat.

You can see the full list below:

1. Tokyo Sto­ry — Yasu­jiro Ozu (1953)
= 2. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stan­ley Kubrick (1968)
= 2. Cit­i­zen Kane – Orson Welles (1941)
4. 8 ½ — Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (1963)
5. Taxi Dri­ver – Mar­tin Scors­ese (1976)
6. Apoc­a­lypse Now – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1979)
= 7. The God­fa­ther – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1972)
= 7. Ver­ti­go – Alfred Hitch­cock (1958)
9. Mir­ror – Andrei Tarkovsky (1974)
10. Bicy­cle Thieves – Vit­to­rio De Sica (1949)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was the Genius Behind Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

While fans wait with increas­ing dour moods on the future of the Twin Peaks reboot, David Lynch is busy doing…something. When the Tribeca Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion Awards hon­ored the direc­tor for his work as founder and chair­man of the David Lynch Foun­da­tion, it turned out Lynch couldn’t make the evening.

Instead of the usu­al apol­o­gy email, the man who once turned some test footage into a weird short film made a quick video to screen at the award show. It’s…Lynchian.

The video fea­tures a Bar­bie doll—-renamed Trix­ie for this short—-lying on a pur­ple blan­ket and tak­ing a call from Lynch, who is out shop­ping for Trixie’s make­up. Hear­ing Lynch’s ver­sion of a woman’s voice is strange enough, but he goes on to chas­tise the young girl when she sug­gests sun­bathing nude is a form of med­i­ta­tion. Then fol­lows Lynch’s pitch for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, which he’s been using as a cre­ative boon since before Eraser­head. See our pre­vi­ous post: David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty. And also: David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney.

The video ends with some mechan­i­cal birds singing. Pos­si­bly they’re from a place where there’s always music in the air, or, most prob­a­bly, from Digi Birds.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this isn’t Lynch’s first Bar­bie video. In 2011 he pro­mot­ed his new cof­fee line with a sim­i­lar video which you can check out here.

Until the Showtime/Twin Peaks nego­ti­a­tions are final­ly solved, any new Lynch is worth check­ing out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Takes Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers Inside the Art & Craft of Mak­ing Indie Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

In the clip above, Mar­tin Scors­ese talks about a group of films that, in his words, have “enriched me, edu­cat­ed me, dis­turbed me, moved me in a way that have awak­ened me to new pos­si­bil­i­ties in cin­e­ma.” Those words will remind many of us of our expe­ri­ences with Scors­ese’s own pic­tures, which rais­es a big ques­tion: what move­ment could pos­si­bly have enough pow­er to enrich, edu­cate, dis­turb, move, and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly awak­en a man who has done so much enrich­ing, edu­cat­ing, dis­turb­ing, mov­ing, and cin­e­mat­ic awak­en­ing him­self?

Scors­ese speaks of the cin­e­ma of South Korea, espe­cial­ly the wave that, over the past twen­ty years, has brought the glob­al film scene such auteurs as Park Chan-wook (Joint Secu­ri­ty Area, Old­boy, Stok­er), Lee Chang-dong (Oasis, Secret Sun­shine, Poet­ry), and Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Sum­mer, Fall, Win­ter… and Spring, 3‑Iron, Pietà). But he adds that, “for me, there’s some­thing espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing about the films of Hong Sang­soo. It’s got to do with his mas­ter­ful sense of sto­ry­telling. In each of his films that I’ve man­aged to see, every­thing kind of starts unas­sum­ing­ly” — but then things “unpeel like an orange.”

Only in one respect can I com­pare myself to Mar­tin Scors­ese: a love of Hong Sang­soo movies. I even wrote an essay for The Quar­ter­ly Con­ver­sa­tion a few years back try­ing to explain the artistry of this most pro­lif­ic Kore­an direc­tor, who has put out six­teen alco­hol-soaked, cig­a­rette-cloud­ed, social and sex­u­al awk­ward­ness-sat­u­rat­ed fea­tures to date. Some call Hong “the Kore­an Woody Allen,” which gets at the fact that his many come­dies of man­ners pass through more moods than com­e­dy and deal with more than man­ners, but that does­n’t cap­ture his pen­chant for rich for­mal and struc­tur­al exper­i­men­ta­tion — sto­ries told mul­ti­ple times, through dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, using clash­ing sets of facts, and so on — which delights cinephiles every­where.

This has made Hong a big name on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit — he usu­al­ly has a project or two mak­ing the rounds at any giv­en time — on which his lat­est movie Hill of Free­dom received much crit­i­cal acclaim. Telling of a Japan­ese man’s trip to Seoul to track down his Kore­an ex-girl­friend through a dis­or­dered pile of let­ters he sent her all at once, the most­ly Eng­lish-lan­guage movie shows the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of not just Hong’s appeal, but of his work itself. It allows few of its char­ac­ters to speak their native lan­guage, result­ing in the kind of mean­ing­ful inar­tic­u­la­cy that he’d pre­vi­ous­ly had to get his all-Kore­an casts drunk to achieve.

You can take the plunge into Hong’s cut-up and metic­u­lous­ly rearranged cin­e­mat­ic world of inept, jeal­ous­ly ide­al­is­tic men, women that I’ve else­where described as “eeri­ly unre­pen­tant stud­ies in blank cal­cu­la­tion and frigid pli­a­bil­i­ty,” and the cat­a­stro­phes into which they lead them­selves by start­ing with his debut The Day the Pig Fell into a Well, avail­able free on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel.

I recent­ly went to Korea to record a pod­cast inter­view with Seoul-based film schol­ar Marc Ray­mond about how Hong’s films reflect mod­ern Kore­an life. It turns out they reflect it pret­ty well, some­thing I’ll see for myself lat­er this year when, after hav­ing stud­ied the Kore­an lan­guage for near­ly a decade, I move to Korea — all out of an inter­est first stoked by Hong Sang­soo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 98 Kore­an Fea­ture Films Free Online, Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

It’s not sur­pris­ing per­haps that we are in a film nerd super­cut gold­en age. After all, all film stu­dents have access to video edit­ing soft­ware, almost all movies are avail­able dig­i­tal­ly, and web­sites, like this one, are per­pet­u­al­ly hun­gry for new con­tent. Great super­cuts reveal some­thing new or unno­ticed about a great direc­tor, like how Yasu­jiro Ozu uses hall­ways or Kubrick favors one-point per­spec­tive. Edi­tor Jacob T. Swin­ney, who won the inter­net last month with his video “First and Final Frames,” just released the third out of a promised four-part super­cut on Quentin Taran­ti­no.

The direc­tor of Pulp Fic­tion and Death Proof is, of course, known for his dia­logue – razor-sharp, obscen­i­ty-laden repar­tee crammed with ref­er­ences to pop cul­ture or obscure movies. What is a Taran­ti­no movie with­out a rant about the true mean­ing of “Like a Vir­gin,” say, or a lengthy dis­course on the dif­fer­ence between McDonald’s menus in Amer­i­can and in Europe? Swin­ney strips away all that dia­logue to explore some of the recur­ring visu­al and audi­al motifs that lard Tarantino’s films. What you real­ize after watch­ing these is just how styl­ized his movies are. Taran­ti­no loves expres­sion­is­tic sound effects, flashy insert shots, gen­er­al­ly aping the look and feel of his cin­e­mat­ic heroes like Ser­gio Leone or King Hu. You can watch the first film above and the next two below.

The first film called “Hear­ing Taran­ti­no” is about all the pun­gent, styl­ized sounds the QT has used. As you can imag­ine, there are lots of gur­gling of blood and clank­ing of swords. What you might not have noticed is how many car­toony whoosh­es and zings he has fold­ed into the sound mix.

The sec­ond vid, “Tarantino’s Extreme Close Ups,” shows lots of eyes bear­ing expres­sions some­where along the ter­ri­fied-pissed off spec­trum.

And the third piece, “Taran­ti­no: Dri­ving Shots,” shows just how much of his movies take place in cars.

The fourth film has yet to come out, but I hope it’s on Tarantino’s not-at-all creepy obses­sion with women’s feet. You can prob­a­bly fill a cou­ple min­utes just on Uma Thur­man’s alone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

Watch Free Online My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.