Any list that doesn't have a single Bertolucci, Bergman or Almodovar film in the top 100 isn't worth the pixels it's written on. Bertolucci's "The Conformist" and Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" are certainly in my top ten, and Almodovar's "La Mala Education" is certainly in my top 100.
Have you really seen "The Seventh Seal" and liked it? I mean, a photographic film with people slapping themselves and a chess-playing devil...meh
Iīm not talking about filmmaking skill or technology breakthrough. Would you really enjoy to watch it? Because I did not...
"The Seventh Seal" is a masterpiece. I love that film every time I see it. Very appropriate for the current times, as well. Although my favorite Bergman is "Wild Strawberries", if there's a great film about the search for meaning in a age of moral uncertainty it's "The Seventh Seal". And Max Von Sydow is brilliant, as always.
You should have questioned his other choices. The Conformist (a great book) is, like most Bertolucci films, boring and presumptuous as hell. Almodovar has directed some great films - Habla con ella, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, for example -, and some terrible ones. "Mala Educacion" falls in the later category, I'm afraid.
My #1 of all time would have to be The Usual Suspects. The Godfather films bore me, they are paced too slowly. I consider myself a real cinema snob and I have never understood the near universal acceptance of the Godfather II as the "greatest" movie of all time.
Hmm.. I've never noticed that universal acceptance.
Here's my top-10 (restricted to a single movie per director to make it fair):
1. The Searchers
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Leopard
4. Raging Bull
5. Yojimbo
6. Wild Strawberries
7. Sunrise
8. 2001: Space Odyssey
9. It's a Wonderful Life
10.Vertigo
Films like "La Strada", "On the Waterfront", "Unforgiven", "E.T.", or "The Bicycle Thief" can easily make the list the next time I re-do it. Not to talk about "Stagecoach" or "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance", who got the boot because of the restriction.