A.O. Scott

"In the number five position, I would — again, choosing among many possible candidates — I think I would put The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. There are John Ford westerns that are more picturesque, that are more sweeping, but that’s a movie that distills an idea of history and depicts — granted, in a kind of mythologizing way, but in a very astute and complicated way — the process of historical change in the American West. That movie is just fascinating to me, and it has sort of a dissertation’s worth of ideas in it, but they’re so well embedded and dramatized, and the performances are so interesting. Jimmy Stewart, to me, is such an interesting and in some ways misunderstood actor, because when you see him, he’s so angry so much of the time. In Winchester ’73 and even in It’s A Wonderful Life. When he comes back to the house in that movie, he says, “Why do we have all these kids anyway?” and he’s just furious."

"My second film is an Israeli film called “The Kindergarten Teacher.” It’s a story about a kindergarten teacher, a woman who discovers that one of her young students, this cherubic little 5-year-old boy, is a poetic prodigy. The movie is, on one level, a kind of a psychological thriller, and a very disturbing one, about her growing obsession with this boy. And her sense that it’s her mission to save him from a society that isn’t gonna care about him. It also works, though, as a critique of that society; Israel, in the director’s view, has abandoned its cultural heritage, its commitment to art, and has become a materialistic and shallow society. The filmmaking was so simple and clear, and it was a very suspenseful movie. I was sort of frustrated because it had a very small release in the United States. It didn’t have Juliette Binoche in it [laughs], so it was not even on the radar, necessarily, of people who go and see movies with subtitles. And yet, it’s very entertaining. But also with this theme: “Why is poetry important? What are the values of a society that kind of push it to the side or don’t take it seriously? And how do you counteract that?” It’s just a very rich movie that I wish more people had seen."

"I would cheat and say the two Godfather movies, The Godfather part I and II, edited in whatever order; I like the way they were sort of edited together in a single movie, but I also like them as they were released separately. And I think that that, for me, is the pinnacle of movies as a popular art form in America. It’s like a great novel, but it’s a super entertaining movie. It’s always funny to think that that was — you know, if you talk to Francis Ford Coppola, that was sort of his commercial movie that he got hired to make, and that was the one he did to make a lot of money. I have nothing original to say about it, but again, a movie that I cannot imagine ever getting tired of watching. When you come across it on TV, you stop and suddenly two hours have gone by, and you’re still with it. If you think about it, the performances in that… Everyone in that movie, just about, is as good as they ever were."

"I guess I would say, again, to choose among a lot of different ones, I love Sullivan’s Travels. I love a lot of Preston Sturges movies. It’s a movie about movies, and I just think it’s just so funny. I love it. The first five minutes of the movie are among the funniest five minutes ever. Like when he’s in the studio boss’s office; it’s the fastest dialogue. [laughs] How they managed to do that scene, it’s just flying."