MC Consensus - Top Films by Female Directors (2000-present)

[Spinal]

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Things to Come

Year: 2016
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

A philosophy teacher soldiers through the death of her mother, getting fired from her job, and dealing with a husband who is cheating on her

• Won Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• Won Best Director at the Bucharest International Film Festival.
• Nominated for Foreign Language Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.

"I needed to feel connected to youth to deal with this subject of aging. I needed to feel strong. The subject matter of the film—facing difficult situations at a time of your life when it’s really not easy to reinvent yourself and start from scratch—actually terrifies me. It does. I’m not a computer; I’m not a robot. When you make a film about something, whatever it’s about, it affects you. If it’s sad, it makes you sad. I’m really like a child with that, and I guess many artists are. You’ve got to live with it for the two next years, you’ve got to talk about it, it’s going to be part of your life. It exists in the most real way. So when I start working on a film I’ve got to be sure I’m strong enough, that I have what I need in order to face whatever the film is about. More than any of my previous films, this film scared me."

[Ezee E]

Surprised that Miranda July hasn't gotten to do more work since her movie.

[Spinal]

We hear you're a girl. We're gonna check that.

Tomboy

Year: 2011
Director: Céline Sciamma

A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old named Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children.

• Won the Teddy Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• Won Best Feature Film at the Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
• Won Best Feature (Audience Award) at the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.
• Won Best Feature at the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

"When I begin to write, each time I ask myself: has it been told yet? And sometimes you can come up with a story that hasn't really been told. There have been movies around this subject, but not ones about schoolgirls with this ambiguity – I haven't seen any anyway. It is the part of the process that most excites me when I'm making a movie. And of course it's also political. When you make a film it's always a balance between, this subject really matters to me in an intimate way, in a political way and, also, it's an opportunity of fiction. That's the kind of balance I'm looking for."

[Spinal]

Surprised that Miranda July hasn't gotten to do more work since her movie.

I read her novel, The First Bad Man, recently. It's really good.

[Spinal]

Never ask for what oughta be offered.

Winter's Bone

Year: 2010
Director: Debra Granik

An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.

• Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (Granik and Anne Rosellini).
• Won 3 awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists including Best Woman Director and Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Film Industry ("for directing, writing, and producing Winter's Bone").
• Won 2 awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• Nominated for 7 Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
• Won Best Narrative Feature (Audience Award) at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
• Won the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at Sundance. Also won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
• Won Best Movie by a Woman at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards.

"In my lowest day, if someone does something unexpected on a subway train, or if someone is especially touching, something they’re doing… Three mariachis walk on a train in some godforsaken part of the greater New York area. I’m like, 'Where did you come from? Do you have family?' My mind is just whirring. 'What’s it like to cross over and stand on a train? Where do you go at night? Do you live with 40 other men in a sort of weird place?' What keeps me going, I think, is that I’ve always been curious about people’s lives. We’re all born onto a very narrow path, and some of us, it’s like a tic. There’s always this wonderment. 'What’s it like on your path? What are your questions? How do you make humor? What’s your version of funny? How do you cope?' It’s like wondering how other people make a go of it. Once people get under your skin, you get an affection for them."

[Spinal]

The previous 11 films were well-supported by Match Cut, but grouped too closely together for ranking to have much significance.

From here forward, the final 15 films will be ranked.

[Ezee E]

Look at the logline for Debra Granik's next movie:

A father and his 13 year-old daughter are living in a paradisiacal existence in a vast urban park in Portland Oregon when a small mistake derails their lives forever.

[Ivan Drago]

Look at the logline for Debra Granik's next movie:

A father and his 13 year-old daughter are living in a paradisiacal existence in a vast urban park in Portland Oregon when a small mistake derails their lives forever.

Sounds like a low-budget indie.

[Spinal]

#15


Do you think I'm masculine?

Everyone Else

Year: 2009
Director: Maren Ade

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

• Won 3 awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• Nominated for 3 German Film Awards including Outstanding Feature Film and Best Direction.
• Won 2 awards at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema including Best Director (International Official Selection).
• Placed 5th in the Village Voice Film Poll for Best Film. Placed 2nd for Best Screenplay (Ade).

"After the rehearsals I changed several things in my mind about how to direct the scenes. I found the idea of the ending with them. Some things have never changed, like the first evening, when Gitti is defending Chris. But there are other scenes like towards the end when Chris screams at Gitti. I asked Lars to just say what his character would like to tell her and I took some lines from what he improvised. At the rehearsals we looked at films and talked a lot. I had to find out that they had to become their own couple, and not the couple that I wrote. What I found so interesting about them is that it's not so clear who is the stronger one. We rehearsed the scenes, then you see that this sentence is not interesting. Or this is a sentence that Chris doesn't have to say. For Gitti's character, the way Birgit says, 'Sometimes I have the feeling I admire you more.' Small things that I thought were important for what is the picture that they make together."

[Spinal]

#14


When you're in the middle of a story, it isn't a story at all but rather a confusion ...

Stories We Tell

Year: 2012
Director: Sarah Polley

A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers.

• Won Best Documentary Screenplay (Polley) from the Writers Guild of America.
• Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary by the Directors Guild of America.
• Nominated for Documentary of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards
• Named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review
• Won Best Non-Fiction Film at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards
• Won Best Canadian Film at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards
• Won Best Documentary by or About Women at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards
• Won Best Documentary (Local or International) at the Australian Film Critics Association Awards
• Named Best Documentary Feature Film by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Also nominated for Best Woman Director and Best Woman Screenwriter.

"I think the story in itself wasn’t the impetus to make the film — it didn’t feel like enough. It’s a good story for the people involved, but I didn’t think it would make a good film. The impetus was the storytelling around it: the fact that after it happened, in the year following these revelations coming out, we were all telling stories about it, to our friends, to each other. Some of us were trying to do something creative with it — to write it, like Dad or Harry — and it was so interesting to see how the stories were beginning to diverge from each other, and how the story would get told back to me like a third, fourth-hand version of it. Someone would come up at a party and say, 'Hey, I heard this story about you,' and then they would tell a story that would bear very little resemblance to what had happened to me, or was emphasizing totally different details. I became really interested in these bizarre, human urges to make a narrative out of a very confusing mess of details, and how deep that goes — like our need to create a narrative in order to make some sort of sense of life."

[Spinal]

#13


There's unscrupulous people out there getting kids to do their dirty work ...

The Selfish Giant

Year: 2013
Director: Clio Barnard

Two thirteen year-old working-class friends in Bradford seek fortune by getting involved with a local scrap dealer and criminal.

• Nominated for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards.
• Nominated in 7 categories at the British Independent Film Awards including Best British Independent Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Barnard).
• Won the Label Europa Cinemas award at Cannes.
• Won British Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.
• Nominated for Best First Screenplay by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain

"In a way, with The Selfish Giant I embraced the language of realism. But I still don’t believe in it. That’s why I wanted it to be a fable. To be in the tradition of realist fables. In a way, [previous film] The Arbor was an experiment, a kind of formal interrogation. Whereas in The Selfish Giant, I kind of accepted an existing form and worked within it. I worried a bit that one might contradict the other when I was in the process of doing The Selfish Giant, but I think what I see subsequently is that in a way, there are similarities. That’s why it was very important to me to keep this connection to Victorian fairy tale. How can it be a fairy tale, a fable, but also be authentic? There’s a gap."

[Spinal]

#12


I guess it was better to hear a flat-out lie than to know the truth at 13.

Monster

Year: 2003
Director: Patty Jenkins

The life of Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute who became a serial killer.

• Named Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("Writer and director Patty Jenkins brings light to this dark tale of a woman whose tragic story is never condoned but deftly brought to life in all its complexity.")
• Won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Also nominated for Best First Screenplay (Jenkins).
• Nominated for Outstanding Film - Wide Release at the GLAAD Media Awards.
• Nomiated for Best Screenplay at the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards.
• Earned numerous awards for lead actress, Charlize Theron, including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

"I felt sort of guilty that I didn't feel more interested in shooting the sex scenes. Everybody was talking about how we were going to do this, and I was like, God, [the way we're] shooting that scene, it's not about the sexuality at all. Maybe I'm making this big mistake, but I just don't think [focusing on] that is appropriate. I don't think the physicality of their sex has anything to do with the movie. There's not nudity. It's not hot. But at the end of the day, I ended up understanding this was the right thing to do. It's about the love. It's not about the sexuality. As for approaching it, [Theron and Christina Ricci] are pros. They blew me away. They're unbelievable. And they both walked away from it saying it was great, saying that it was the best sex scene they ever filmed because of the fact that we approached it about the love, which grounded it all in character. Both of them expressed to me separately that working on other films before, [directors] had been like, 'And then lick her, and lick the guy, and do this...' and it became this physical thing that they were aware of. But here we were grounded in character."

[Spinal]

#11


We will not wait any longer!

Selma

Year: 2014
Director: Ava DuVernay

A chronicle of Martin Luther King's campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.

• Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
• Nominated for 4 Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director.
• Named Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("This is a film that flies the flag high for American film, inviting audiences to rise above the breathless shame of our nation's past and come together as one as we look to the future.")
• Won 4 awards from the African-American Film Critics Association including Best Picture and Best Director.
• Won 2 awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists including Best Woman Director. Nominated for 2 others, including Best Picture and Best Director.
• Nominated for 5 Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature and Best Director.
• Won Film Director of the Year from the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association.
• Won the Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review.
• Won 2 categories at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards including Best Movie by a Woman and Best Female Action Star (Oprah Winfrey)[?!]

"I was approaching it from my point of view as a woman filmmaker: The idea of showing a bombing, showing a blast, showing any kind of detonation might be different from that of a male director who might be more interested — and this is just based on what I've seen for many, many years — might be more interested in the physicality of the blast, the gusto of that violence. I was much more interested in reverence for the girls. It was important to me that you hear their voices. You hear what their concerns are at that moment as four little black girls walking down a staircase in what should be a safe place, in their sanctuary, in their church. They're talking about hair. They're talking about Coretta Scott King's hairstyle. They're talking about what little black girls talk about — getting your hair wet and keeping it pressed and doing all that kind of thing. You start to come into their world just as they are taken out of the world. And so from there, what is the next thing to show? Is it shrapnel? Is it fire? For me it was the fabric of their dresses and their patent leather shoes, all of the things that remain from the souls that were lost."

[Spinal]

#10


I mean it's got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they're watching TV.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Year: 2011
Director: Lynne Ramsay

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up.

• Nominated for 3 BAFTA Awards including Best British Film and Best Director.
• Won Best Woman Director from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Nominated in 3 other categories including Best Adapted Screenplay (Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear).
• Won Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards. Nominated in 5 other categories including Best British Independent Film and Best Screenplay.
• Won Best Film at the Evening Standard British Film Awards.
• Won 3 awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival including Best Film and Best Director.
• Won British Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Nominated in 4 other categories including Director of the Year.
• Won Best Film at the London Film Festival.
• Won Best Movie by a Woman at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards. Nominated in 3 other categories.
• Won Best Film Screenplay from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

"I felt like it was good to keep my independence from a movie studio to make this kind of movie. Besides I don’t think any studio would have taken it. It was very run and gun in a way but very, very planned. We shot in CinemaScope. Producers always say, ‘Oh my gosh, CinemaScope, you mean more landscape?’ Because it’s so expansive, but to me it’s fantastic because you can do two shots instead of one single. It was like a western for them. They normally only use that in westerns. And that’s wonderful because it’s like this epic in the every day. Using that in a family drama and making it very epic was important to me. But it also saves a lot of time and money because of the size of the frames. I could make the war between Kevin and Eva in the frames."

[Spinal]

#9


Well, everyone's a coward about something, you know?

The Hurt Locker

Year: 2008
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

• Won 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Bigelow was the first woman to win the latter award.
• Nominated for 3 Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director.
• Won 6 BAFTA Awards including Best Film and Best Director.
• Won Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("Marked by the bravura direction of Kathryn Bigelow and grounded in Mark Boal's taut, unsentimental script, this grippingly real story detonates an emotional portrait of combat and camaraderie abroad, and alienation at home.")
• Won 6 awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, including Best Picture and Best Director.
• Won Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures from the Directors Guild of America.
• Won Director of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Also nominated for Film of the Year.
• Won Best Film and Best Director at the National Society of Film Critics Awards.
• Won Best Film and Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
• Won Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures at the PGA Awards.
• Won 4 awards at the Venice Film Festival.
• Named Best Film in the Village Voice Film Poll.

"For some individuals—some soldiers, some contractors—combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison. Again, for some individuals, I think it’s very interesting to look at that. And you can also say that about firemen, police officers. There are individuals who choose to walk into a burning building to save lives, and that’s what these men are doing. I see them as extraordinary portraits, regardless of how you feel about the conflict. I think of the film, in a way, as non-partisan. It’s not commenting, as Mark [Boal] said when he was working on the script. There’s that old saw about how there’s no politics in the trenches. And when he went over there, sure enough, there’s nobody talking about politics. They’re talking about whether they’re gonna survive, or 'What’s your favorite beer?'"

[Spinal]

#8


I want my pain to be inflicted on others.

American Psycho

Year: 2000
Director: Mary Harron

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

• Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Harron and Guinevere Turner) at the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards.
• Nominated in 2 categories at the London Critics Circle Film Awards including Director of the Year.
• Won Special Recognition from the National Board of Review "for excellence in filmmaking."
• Won Best Movie from the International Horror Guild.

"I had already cast Christian Bale to play the role, and I was standing in my kitchen in the East Village, and I got a phone call saying, 'You should sit down. Leonardo DiCaprio wants to be in your movie, and we’re going to pay him twenty million dollars.' I told them that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. He’s not right for the role, and he has a fifteen-year-old-girl fan base. You can’t cast him coming off Titanic. I think he’s a great actor, but he wasn’t right for it; Patrick Bateman is a very specific character. Christian Bale had something, an authority and a darkness, whereas DiCaprio is more of a poetic actor. Some actors can draw from their own darkness. Both Bale and Lili Taylor have this fathomless place in them; when you look at them you can go far into them. They can both play very saintly and very bad. I mean, Christian Bale played Jesus in something. Christian is also a great comic actor and he brought that to the role. We had a very similar take on the character. I think, being partly British, he thought the role of Bateman was funny and approached it with humor. He loved the patheticness of the character, how embarrassing Bateman was. Trying to be cool and failing so badly."

[Spinal]

#7


I'm the motherfucker that found this place. Sir.

Zero Dark Thirty

Year: 2012
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.

• Nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture.
• Nominated for 4 Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director.
• Nominated for 5 BAFTA Awards including Best Film and Best Director.
• Won Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal chronicle the world's greatest manhunt with the electric intensity of a glance, the politics of personality and the very real question of what it takes to find the truth.")
• Won 8 awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists including Best Picture and Best Director.
• Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.
• Won Best Director in the Indiewire Critics' Poll.
• Won 3 awards from the National Board of Review including Best Film and Best Director.
• Won 3 categories at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards including Best Film and Best Director.
• Nominated for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures at the PGA Awards.
• Won 3 categories at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards including Best Movie by a Woman, Best Female Images in a Movie and Best Equality of the Sexes.

"I think it was very important to us, and certainly from the script, to really give the audience a sort of 'you are there' feel to this piece. In other words, peel back the curtain of the intelligence hunt and get a glimpse of what it might be like to actually try to find a very sharp needle in a very big haystack, and to do it in a way that feels like it’s unfolding in real time in front of you and around you. You’re inside it, especially with the raid itself. The raid was the most challenging logistically, because we had to shoot in low light conditions to replicate a moonless night, and then no light conditions to use the night vision goggles, which were real night vision lenses that we adapted to our camera lenses, and they only work in zero light conditions. You have about 100 crew members and 22 Seals traipsing around a pitch black, rubble-strewn set which was kind of interesting. But again, the desire was to make it feel like you are there. I don’t mean a lot of subjective camera, but nonetheless a kind of sense that it feels real and that it’s unfolding around you in real time."

[Spinal]

#6


She'd rather save a man than be with God, I think.

The Holy Girl

Year: 2004
Director: Lucrecia Martel

16-year-old Amalia looks to save the soul of a middle-aged doctor.

• Won a special mention at the Reykjavik International Film Festival "for its unique personal vision and sense of form."
• Won 2 categories at the ClarÃ*n Entertainment Awards including Best Director - Film.
• Nominated in 4 categories at the Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards.
• Earned an honorable mention at the São Paulo International Film Festival.

"For me, a film is not just storytelling but an attempt for me to share some perceptions with the viewer. A film for me is a mechanism to show thought, but I interpret thought as a mix of perception and emotion. In the world of cinema, in particular of cinema students and writers, there’s this idea that cinema is about storytelling. I don’t share that view. I believe that cinema is a lot more than that; I believe that storytelling is just the starting point; it’s like a device you use to share a lot more than the story itself."

[Spinal]

#5


I want my first time to be with someone I don't love.

Fat Girl

Year: 2001
Director: Catherine Breillat

Two sisters confront their sexual attitudes and experiences while on a family holiday.

• Won France Culture Award (French Cineaste of the Year) at Cannes.
• Won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• Won Best Film at the Chicago International Film Festival.
• Won the MovieZone Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

"For me, the initial rape is that of the virginity of the young girl, the sister, who does not get to own her own virginity. Society wants to know if a young girl is a virgin or not. I think that is a rape. The older sister is the real rape in the film because she is in a position where you have to combine sentimentality with the physical act. This kind of sexual act is very normal, but she feels the boy must be the love of her life. It’s just a summer love, but she thinks it’s not normal, not normal enough. We give so much emphasis to the sexual acts of a young girl that she wants him to tell her lies. When she agrees to have sex with him, she agrees because she thinks it’s love. But she’s really accepting this rationale because of his lies. I think this is mental rape, the worst rape — because it’s a rape in which the woman gives up her self-esteem, a rape that does not even show up as a rape, because everyone lives like that — lives for romantic love. That’s why I say that Fat Girl is like a sitcom. It’s completely ridiculous that we live for lies. Actually, it’s not ridiculous, it’s not funny. It’s terrible. I say it’s like a sitcom, but since I go into the truth of sentimental emotion, in that way it isn’t really like one. It is more tragic and more comic. You have to think about it."

[Spinal]

#4


Look into my eyes
You see trouble every day
It's on the inside of me
So don't try to understand ...

Trouble Every Day

Year: 2001
Director: Claire Denis

Shane and June are honeymooning in Paris in an effort to nurture their new life together, a life complicated by Shane's mysterious and frequent visits to a medical clinic where cutting edge studies of the human libido are undertaken.

• Unlike the other films on this list, Trouble Every Day received no notable awards upon its release, and also inspired what can generously be called 'mixed' reviews. It currently sits at 49% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• According to Wikipedia: "Later, the film developed a small following who admire it for its themes of existentialism and its unique take on the horror genre as well as gender roles."

"I don’t at all like the idea of a screenplay being a cage and that inside the cage you have to direct the actors. It seems to me that a screenplay is a kind of take-off and that the best moment is to see the characters taking off. They can turn left, or right, loop the loop, whatever. And at the same time you’re always a bit afraid. As long as they don’t crash. Because if filming means you have to control everything, I’d shoot myself. You already have to control the framing, the colours, the costumes, the sets and all that."

[Grouchy]

How the hell do the two Bigelow movies maintain such a good reputation?

[Spinal]

#3


Sir, I'm not from around here. I can't be an example.

Wendy and Lucy

Year: 2008
Director: Kelly Reichardt

Over the summer, a series of unfortunate happening triggers a financial crisis for a young woman and she soon finds her life falling apart.

• Won Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("Director, co-writer and co-editor Kelly Reichardt trusts the simplicity of a well-plotted, emotional story to reach its audience, infusing this minimalist movie about a woman and her dog with quiet moments that do not beg for sympathy.")
• Nominated for 2 Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature.
• Won Best Picture at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.
• Nominated for 3 awards by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists including Best Woman Director and Best Woman Screenwriter (Reichardt).
• Won the Palm Dog at Cannes.

"We’re making these films out of nothing, so we know from the beginning when we’re working on a story that it has to mostly be exteriors because there are no lights, and to keep the apparatus small so we can have movement and that there aren’t going to be a ton of characters. They’re small stories because we don’t have the money for anything [else]. And I’m a minimalist. I really just want it to be manageable so that I can focus. I enjoy watching bigger films, but it’s just so not my way. I want to avoid, I guess, as much of the film industry as possible. It brings me to cast people I know and that I already have relationships with, there’s no real division between cast and crew. We’re all just sort of in it together. I can’t really picture doing anything that’s you know, the crowd scene. It’s just too much action for me."

[Spinal]

#2


I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses... taking pictures of your feet.

Lost in Translation

Year: 2003
Director: Sofia Coppola

A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo.

• Won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Coppola). Nominated for 3 others, including Best Picture and Best Director.
• Won 3 Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical and Best Screenplay. Nominated for 2 others, including Best Director.
• Won 3 BAFTA Awards. Nominated for 5 others, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
• Won Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. ("Lost in Translation is only the second feature film by Sofia Coppola, yet it presents a unique voice in American film.")
• Won Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
• Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.
• Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in International Film by the Directors Guild of Great Britain.
• Won 4 Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
• Won a Special Achievement Award from the National Board of Review "for writing, directing and producing." (Coppola)
• Won Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
• Won 2 awards at the Venice Film Festival.
• Named Best Film in the Village Voice Film Poll.
• Won Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.

"There’s a painter called John Kacere who does paintings of girls in different underwear, so [the opening shot is] taken from one of his paintings. When I started the movie, I had a reference book of different images that came to mind with the movie. I always collect reference pictures to make a book that I can show, and they were just snapshots around Tokyo, looking out the taxi and seeing neon lights going by, and I used to stay at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, so there were pictures of the view from the hotel bar. And the redheaded singer [in the film] was actually a singer I saw performing at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, and we got the manager to track her down."

[Spinal]

#1


My sister has met the author and she wants to read it for herself to see if he's an idiot or not.

Bright Star

Year: 2009
Director: Jane Campion

The three-year romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne near the end of his life.

• Won 2 awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists including Best Woman Screenwriter (Campion). Nominated for 5 others, including Best Woman Director.
• Won 3 awards from the Australian Film Institute. Nominated for 8 others, including Best Film, Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay.
• Nominated for 4 British Independent Film Awards including Best Director.
• Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
• Nominated for British Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.
• Nominated for Best Movie by a Woman at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards.

"I thought there was no way to tell the story that is a birth-death biopic. I wouldn’t do it. Because it would be too generalized within two hours, unless you found some really crazy way to do it, like that Bob Dylan one, the Todd Haynes one. [I’m Not There.] Which is, I thought, great, and very interesting. Unless you take an extremely different view of [a subject], it just wouldn’t work for me. The part of this story that was so accessible to me was the love story. Plus the fact that the letters were real; I could read what Keats actually wrote to Fanny. And when you read them, you think, 'Well, this is what she was reading in 1819 or whatever.' You think, 'Oh my God. What an incredible girl to handle it, in a way, so well.' Because they’re very full-on. I think I would have been intimidated, and been… [Makes nervous noise.] I admire her courage and loyalty to accept the full-on blast of his affections. I think also there’s something that interested me about the tenderness and delicacy and gentleness of the story that’s not at large in cinema much today."

[Spinal]

1. Bright Star (42.5)
2. Lost in Translation (41.5)
3. Wendy and Lucy (31)
4. Trouble Every Day (28.5)
5. Fat Girl (23)
6. The Holy Girl (22.5)
7. Zero Dark Thirty (22)
8. American Psycho (21)
9. The Hurt Locker (19.5)
10. We Need to Talk About Kevin (18.5)
11. Selma (18)
12. Monster (17)
13. The Selfish Giant (16.5)
14. Stories We Tell (16)
15. Everyone Else (15.5)

(all others listed below received between 12.5 and 15 points)
American Splendor
Cloud Atlas
Innocence
La Ciénaga
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Mustang
The Babadook
The Beaches of Agnes
Things to Come
Tomboy
Winter's Bone

For comparison, here is Indiewire's poll results:

1. Lost in Translation
2. Toni Erdmann
3. We Need to Talk About Kevin
4. American Psycho
5. The Hurt Locker
6. Monsoon Wedding
7. Whale Rider
8. The Babadook
9. Stories We Tell
10. Selma
11. American Honey
12. The Arbor
13. Wendy and Lucy
14. Persepolis
15. The Kids are All Right
16. Lovely and Amazing
17. The Beaches of Agnes
18. No Home Movie
19. Breathe
20. Bend It Like Beckham
21. Pariah
22. Monster
23. Cameraperson
24. 35 Shots of Rum
25. Tomboy