If I Had a Sight & Sound Ballot ... Take 2

One thing I've learned from obsessing over Sight & Sound's Greatest Film Poll, and reading individual critics' and directors' Top Tens, is that I prefer the Top Tens that are more explicitly personal and quirky, more an expression of what that person might bring to their desert island, and not what they think are the actual greatest films of all time.

I mean, it's just an opinion, and essentially meaningless, so it might as well be revealing.

With that in mind, I'd like to revise my ballot (unasked for, uncounted) for the poll. Here are the ten films I pick today. They're coming with me to my desert island so they might as well be on my list.

If I had a Sight and Sound ballot ...

These would be my picks. They are not necessarily my ten favorite films (my desert island flicks) but for various reasons these are the ten that seem to me to be the "greatest." I would elaborate on that but that would involve all sorts of thinking.

The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)

Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939)

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

The Third Man (Reed, 1949)

Singin' in the Rain (Donen, 1952)

Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)

Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)

Some Like it Hot (Wilder, 1959)

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)

Vertigo!

Congratulations on taking over the number one spot. You deserve it. And not just for that bun.