Best Ever Author Philip Dale

"The joke density approaches one per second, but the real genius of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker's 1980 masterpiece is casting dramatic actors who play catastrophe completely straight."

"Roman Polanski made a film noir in 1974 that's darker than anything from 1944."

"Spike Lee made a movie about the hottest day of the summer, and America is still arguing about it."

"No narration, no characters, no plot—just images of a world out of balance set to Philip Glass's pulsing score. Godfrey Reggio's 1982 film invented a form and remains its only necessary example."

"Alain Delon barely speaks for ninety minutes and communicates everything—Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 masterpiece invented a grammar of cool that cinema has been speaking ever since."

"Andrei Tarkovsky made a science fiction film with no special effects, and it's the most alien thing you'll ever see."

"François Truffaut remembered what it felt like to be a child, and the memory broke cinema wide open."

"John Hughes locked five teenagers in a library and found the universal in the specific."

"Bill Murray talks his way into the Army and talks his way through basic training—Ivan Reitman's 1981 hit invented the slacker-joins-institution comedy and remains the purest showcase for Murray's motormouth charm."

"Yasujirō Ozu made a film about disappointment so gentle it feels like forgiveness."