The Incredible Suit is 10 years old, so here are its 100 best films obviously!

Unbelievably (despite time being a constant), it's one-tenth of a century today since this ridiculous excuse for a website winked into existence. 1,168 blog posts later, somebody at The Incredible Suit HQ thought it would be a good idea to celebrate by collating the entire team's 100 favourite films and ranking them for you to ignore at your leisure. So we took all the votes, assigned points, divided the results by the total number of staff, fed the whole lot to a diarrhitic cow and what fell out of the other end can be found below.

Now this is very much a combination of what might loosely be described as "best" and "favourite" films, so yes it's quite Hitchcock-heavy, yes there are a few Bond films that probably won't be troubling the Sight & Sound top ten any time soon, and no Citizen Kane isn't in there even though it's obviously brilliant. It's just, what would you rather watch, Kane or Licence To Kill? Exactly.

So without further ado, and the obvious caveat that despite the wealth of knowledge and experience across the board, nobody at The Incredible Suit has seen all of the films ever made, here goes. See you in another ten years for the 100 worst films.

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100. THE MACHINE THAT KILLS BAD PEOPLE (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

Rossellini blends social commentary with commedia dell'arte in a politically turbulent post-war Italy; the result is as incisive and comprehensive a jab at human failings as you'll find in all of cinema. An underrated, underseen gem.

99. BARRY LYNDON (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
Long, slow and low on incident, yet hypnotically wonderful and - thanks mainly to Michael Hordern's droll voiceover - devilishly funny. Show me a better 18th century period tragicomedy and I'll pretend I can't hear you.

98. RAISING CAIN (Brian De Palma, 1992)
John Lithgow at his most deliciously hammy, a ridiculous surprise every five minutes and some inspired twists on De Palma's mandatory Hitchcock nods. The best film with a two-word title wherein the second word is, or is a slight variation of, "Cain".

97. DAISIES (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

The Thelma & Louise of the Czechoslavakian new wave tear society a new one in this gleefully provocative, adorably bonkers blast of kaleidoscopic anarchy. Features the kind of cinematic women I'd love to hang out with if I didn't think they'd eat me for breakfast.

96. PILLOW TALK (Michael Gordon, 1959)
Gloriously 1950s in its production design yet driven by surprisingly modern sexual attitudes, Pillow Talk boasts a crackling, innuendo-laden script in which Doris Day and Rock Hudson become embroiled in a hilarious battle of the sexes. Delightful.

95. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (Robert Wiene, 1920)

A multi-layered murder-mystery set in a splintered, spiky dreamscape, this bastard-mad nightmare is a skewed comment on its own unique historical context and an undeniable template for the next century of filmmaking: Alfred Hitchcock and Tim Burton would have been fucked without it.

94. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (John McTiernan, 1995)
Obviously not a patch on the original, but this final film in the Die Hard series is a fitting end to the trilogy. It's a pity they never made any more Die Hard films, but there you go. Nothing lasts forever.

93. ANIMAL KINGDOM (David Michôd, 2010)

Michôd treats his audience with absolute respect in this intelligent and shattering drama about loyalty, conscience and finding your place in the world. Also features terrifying bastard Ben Mendelsohn at his most terrifyingly bastardy.

92. BATMAN BEGINS (Christopher Nolan, 2005)
More gripping and emotionally complex than the Burton/Schumacher years, Begins gave me everything I wanted from a Batflick: ferocious fight scenes, a Gotham City risen from Hell itself and a Batman who, if you met him in a dark alley, would actually make you do a poo in your trousers.

91. THE DARK KNIGHT (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Nolan takes the duality motif that drives the Batman mythology and cranks it up to 11 in his sequel, but never lets the immense scale of his film overwhelm it. Obvious MVP: Heath Ledger, for straight up pretending Jack Nicholson never existed.

90. DRIVE (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
Genre-defying retro-neo-noir in which Ryan Gosling does very little apart from pootle about in a car and beat a few people up, but does it in such inimitable style and backed by an achingly hip soundtrack that it's impossible to take your eyes off him.

89. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Spike Jonze, 1999)
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich: Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich.

88. E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (Steven Spielberg, 1982)

Like the best kids' films, E.T. deals with the misery of growing up: the magical twilight of the first half, with its faceless grown-ups (except for Mom) and literal wide-eyed optimism, gives way to a harshly-lit second full of mean adults, death and loss. Fun for all the family!

87. MEAN STREETS (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Scorsese's youth splashed across the screen in deathly blacks and hellish reds. Evocative and original, this is effectively Ground Zero for both the Scorsese brand and decades of pale imitations to come.

86. LOLITA (Stanley Kubrick, 1962)
Kubrick makes you pity a paedophile in this indefinable oddity. Controversial, sure, but more importantly funny as fuck, with fully-drawn characters that blow Kubrick's false rep as a cold, dispassionate director out of the water.

85. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)
To me this is much richer than that other Jimmy Stewart Christmas film they keep banging on about: I love Lubitsch's effortless blend of frothy romcom with a darker edge that opens up the comedy like the bitters in a martini.

84. PADDINGTON 2 (Paul King, 2017)
As bursting with heart, charm and barely-tolerable delightfulness as its predecessor. Everything here is wonderful, from Peter Capaldi's all-too-brief turn as the Daily Mail in human form to Ben Whishaw's unfailingly affable delivery in his role as the ultimate care bear.

83. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren, 1943)

Deren's wacky avant-garde adventure still has the power to baffle and unsettle in equal measure. Unbelievable that chrome ping-pong-ball glasses didn't take off after this was released.

82. JAWS (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
I still maintain the first half is the best: the island-based tension, the pig-headedness of Mayor Vaughn (the film's true villain), Spielberg's impeccable deep staging and the terror that comes from never seeing the shark are all more fun than the second half's Alien-on-a-boat stuff. But, you know, it's Jaws.

81. THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Hitchcock's first masterpiece: a mesmerising combination of German Expressionism, Hollywood stylings and distinctly British humour. Even Ivor Novello's decision to act like he has an awkwardly-shaped object stuck up his bum can't spoil the mood.

80. TRAINSPOTTING (Danny Boyle, 1996)
I don't actually remember most of the time I spent shooting up skag in mid-'90s Edinburgh, but Trainspotting is so exquisitely evocative of that time that I'm convinced I must have done.

79. THE CLOCK (Christian Marclay, 2010)
I'll be honest, I haven't seen it all (it's twenty-four hours long, do me a favour) but what I have seen was so unbelievably well done and dangerously addictive that there's no way it shouldn't be on this list.

78. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (Brian De Palma, 1996)
Still the best Mission, yeah whatever Chris McQuarrie. The Langley break-in is one of the greatest set-pieces in action cinema, and all that train stuff is fab too. Let's not talk about the "internet" bits.

77. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (Peter Hunt, 1969)

Takes more risks than any Bond film before or since, and it's all the better for it. The first act plays out like a romantic melodrama and culminates in a full-on cheesegasm that sits oddly in the canon, but from then on it's vintage Bond action all the way to its shattering climax.

76. ROBOCOP (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Mild-mannered police officer Rob O'Cop is shot to shreds and reborn as a walking justice machine, with hilariously gory consequences! Verhoeven makes his villains so unbelievably horrible that every splattery death is air-punchingly satisfying.

75. THE FLY (David Cronenberg, 1986)
Stomach-churningly gross but razor sharp critique of the dangers of technological hubris, or useful primer on home preserving and pickling? Hard to say.

74. CLOVERFIELD (Matt Reeves, 2008)
Twenty minutes of zippy setup followed by fifty minutes of sheer balls-out action, nerve-shredding tension and sphincter-clenching terror. Found footage movies peaked with this, as did the Cloverfield franchise.

73. SKYFALL (Sam Mendes, 2012)
Probably the most thematically rich Bond film, with notions of honour, loyalty and mortality woven into almost every scene. Bond as a character and a franchise undergo some surprising existential evaluation before deciding that yes, it's all brilliant, keep up the good work. And then they made Spectre.

72. JURASSIC PARK (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The grand convergence of all Spielberg's talents in one glorious, toothy package. Everything he ever did well, he does perfectly here, aided by across-the-board technical excellence in an opus of peerless entertainment.

71. SCHOOL OF ROCK (Richard Linklater, 2003)

Joan Cusack and a bunch of schoolkids hold their own against Jack Black at his Jackest Blackest. An absolute happy place of a film.

70. SPEED (Jan de Bont, 1994)
Absolutely shameless popcorn flick that has no right to be as good as it is, nor as emotionally affecting. Every time the bus ploughs through the pram I want to hold Sandra close and tell her it's fine, it's just full of cans. It's just full of cans.

69. THE LORD OF THE RINGS (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)
Lumping the trilogy together because its constituent parts are beautifully consistent in tone and style, which is just one of the many things that makes it one of the greatest achievements in cinema. Maybe one day they'll make a film of The Hobbit?

68. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (Terence Young, 1963)
Shot through with paranoia, double-crosses and shadow-cloaked deaths at every turn, this is Bond's greatest Cold War adventure. The formula hasn't settled yet so it's not quite A James Bond Film, but it is a great film with James Bond in it.

67. BEFORE SUNSET (Richard Linklater, 2004)
Romantic idealism meets cold reality in a stream of Parisian waffle, and it's as lovely as (but, crucially, even shorter than) the first one.

66. THELMA & LOUISE (Ridley Scott, 1991)

Cinema's greatest female double act since Daisies leaves a trail of empowering, feminist destruction across the US and a scar across my heart. Makes me want to rush to the Grand Canyon with a massive net.

65. THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF (Basil Dearden, 1970)

Roger Moore's best film, this sees him in a dual role as a starched exec and his mysterious, antagonistic doppelgänger, a womanising bounder intent on taking over his dull counterpart’s life. As mad as it sounds, and then some.

64. NOTORIOUS (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
With impressively tight storytelling across a bare minimum of scenes, Hitchcock handles the script's various discoveries and revelations impeccably, driving the film to its perfect climax in typically classy style. Bergman and Rains are untouchable.

63. TOY STORY (John Lasseter, 1995)
It's one thing to make an entire film inside a computer; it's another thing entirely to make it THIS GOOD. I mean that computer must have been amazing, like a Spectrum 128K +2 or something.

62. MONSTERS, INC. (Pete Docter, 2001)
The point at which it became clear Pixar were just going to be tossing these masterpieces off like clipped toenails every couple of years. Imagine knowing then that they'd eventually be doing it every six months or so.

61. CASINO ROYALE (Martin Campbell, 2006)
Daniel Craig grabs James Bond by the lapels and turns him into a box office juggernaut, a sharply-dressed bricklayer and an emotional wreck. The long-term effect on the franchise is still anyone's guess, but as a standalone film this is one of the 21st century's greatest action movies.

60. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

Possibly the most effective method of contraception on the market. If you still want kids after seeing this then you should probably consider some kind of therapy. Tilda Swinton predictably knocks it out of the park, but the three youngsters who play Kevin give the film its spine-chilling spine.

59. INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (Steven Spielberg, 1984)
Breathlessly exciting and gleefully dark se/prequel. Every fight and stunt matters, every set-piece is seared into action cinema lore and the script is emblematic of the wit that characterises the Golden Age of Spielberg. Temple Of Doom is Raiders' evil twin, and anyone who prefers Last Crusade is an unbearable goody-goody.

58. GOLDFINGER (Guy Hamilton, 1964)
Established the formula the series would employ repeatedly, with varying degrees of success, over the next forty-odd years, so cannot be underestimated. Every frame oozes impeccable style, 1960s cool and a sense of fun that mark it out as the definitive Bond Film.

57. THE APARTMENT (Billy Wilder, 1960)

Despicable, Fred MacMurray-wise; adorable, Jack Lemmon-wise; delightful, Shirley Maclaine-wise and wonderful, otherwise-wise.

56. BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Richard Linklater, 2013)
The best of the trilogy, only because it's so brutally honest and real. Hard as fuck to watch, mind, like seeing your mum & dad rowing (as in having a row, not rowing a boat).

55. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (John Glen, 1987)
Timothy Dalton reboots Bond as a vaguely realistic human being twenty years before audiences were ready for it. Audiences are fucken idiots.

54. LICENCE TO KILL (John Glen, 1989)

Dalton ensures that Ian Fleming's James Bond - largely absent from his own film series since From Russia With Love - makes a welcome reappearance in this, the best James Bond film shut up.

53. MOULIN ROUGE! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
Like shoving a lit firework up your bottom and having it explode behind your eyeballs for two hours. Audacious contemporary songs and retina-terrorising production design combine with a beautiful, passionate love story. Also Nicole Kidman is well fit.

52. THE INCREDIBLES (Brad Bird, 2004)
Still one of Pixar's finest, with their most thrilling set pieces, the coolest music and Samuel L Jackson’s greatest ever scene, in which he attempts to locate his costume against the wishes of his obstreperous missus.

51. THE LADY VANISHES (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
A deliciously tongue-in-cheek love letter to Hitchcock's fellow countrymen, The Lady Vanishes simultaneously embraces and mercilessly lampoons the idiosyncracies of the English like a 1930s Paddington.

50. THE TERMINATOR (James Cameron, 1984)
The simplest of plots spiced up with a little cheeky time travel and some hilarious ultraviolence are all well and good, but Schwarzenegger knocks everything up a notch. Who can forget his brilliant catchphrase, "I'll come back later on, say 7ish"?

49. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

Absolutely belting wartime thriller that racks up more inventive set-pieces, humour and diabolical intrigue than most of its modern-day counterparts: the sixteen-minute Amsterdam sequence alone is slicker and more exciting than most of what Ethan Hunt or James Bond have managed recently.

48. X2 (Bryan Singer, 2003)

Roughly the point where superhero films stopped being silly and became epic, thoughtful metaphors for real-world issues. Also the point where it became clear that Hugh Jackman is a god amongst mortals.

47. SPIDER-MAN 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
Still the best Spidey film, mostly down to Doc Ock, who's written and played to perfection. Also my favourite superhero film; everything both amazing and shitty about being a super are in here. Looks exactly like a comic book, too.

46. REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
The way Jimmy Stewart pieces a murder mystery together from the available information is a delicious reflection of Hitchcock's own storytelling technique. A film about films, full of tiny cinema screens, told by a master manipulator.

45. INSIDE OUT (Pete Docter, 2015)
A party bag of visual delights backed up by Pixar's trademark emotional wallop, Inside Out packs enough of a punch to put you in intensive care at Feels General. A ridiculously triumphant comeback for the studio after a run of lesser films and a miserable hiatus.

44. BRIEF ENCOUNTER (David Lean, 1945)
The most buttock-clenchingly British film ever made, in which two painfully repressed toffs meet, fall in love when they shouldn't and fuck like Duracell bunnies whenever they're off camera. So classy.

43. PATHS OF GLORY (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
Kubrick's first masterpiece is a devastating, furious assault on the injustices committed in wartime in the name of patriotism. Staggering in all the best and worst ways, with Kirk Douglas magnetic as one of Stan's few heroes.

42. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (James Cameron, 1991)
An object lesson in how to make a bigger, better sequel without shitting on the spirit of the original (all other Terminator films have failed to learn this lesson). Arnie is absolutely perfect; never has a star been so irreplaceable in a role.

41. SPIRITED AWAY (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

Everything Miyazaki cares about, and everything he was a master of, is woven into this film in exactly the right proportions, making it both the ideal introduction to his work and the definitive Miyazaki masterpiece.

40. TOY STORY 2 (John Lasseter, 1999)
Themes of friendship and belonging, wrapped in an existential crisis undergone by a cowboy doll made of pixels, masquerading as a hilarious action adventure. Still Pixar's greatest achievement, which is really saying something.

39. 12 ANGRY MEN (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
Gloriously sweaty courtroom drama about tolerance, selflessness and not being a prick that everyone who is an intolerant, selfish prick should watch. Henry Fonda is cinema's least exciting (but genuinely heroic) hero.

38. THE COLOR PURPLE (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

Whoopi Goldberg is terrific as the downtrodden housewife who just about keeps a slender grip on her pride in Spielberg’s first “grown up” film. The Colo(u)r Purple wrings joy from small kindnesses, lacing a potentially crushing experience with the sweet potential of hope. Cried my tits off.

37. THE BIRDS (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
Hitchcock's fourth masterpiece in a row ends cinema's most phenomenal purple patch in technically breathtaking style. A story about men and women, mothers and children, and birds and bees. Mostly birds, to be fair. The clue's in the title.

36. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (George Cukor, 1940)
Delightfully perfect and perfectly delightful example of Hollywood's Golden Age at its goldenest. Jimmy Stewart's drunk chat with Cary Grant is bigger than Jesus.

35. FUNNY GAMES (Michael Haneke, 1997)
Enough to put you off films for life. (This is a recommendation)

34. ARRIVAL (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)
The kind of smart, elegant sci-fi that Christopher Nolan routinely overcomplicates. Takes time to get where it's going, but when it does, WOAH.

33. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy, 1967)

The Frenchest thing I've ever seen, and also among the most delightful musicals. Michel Legrand's songs are ooh la la, Gene Kelly is magnifique and the serial killer subplot is incroyable.

32. TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
A hallucinatory tale of shattering loneliness and misguided vengeance. Scorsese commands a din of inscrutable characters and mysterious stylings to accompany one man's descent from amusing social awkwardness to ferocious, guns-blazing psychopathy.

31. ALIENS (James Cameron, 1986)
Two ideologically-opposed mother figures snipe at each other like they're on a sci-fi Mumsnet, while James Cameron amps everything up for a change in this tremendous, balls-to-the-wall sequel.

30. PADDINGTON (Paul King, 2014)
A sweet, intelligent, tears-streaming-down-your-chops joy which celebrates and commemorates the idiosyncracies of the English with pinpoint accuracy.

29. TOP HAT (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

Almost unbearably delightful hoofer in which weapons-grade farce is deployed to bring Fred & Ginger together against all odds. Spellbinding dancing, gorgeous songs and high camp combine to spoil the audience rotten.

28. SCHINDLER'S LIST (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
Few directors have been in a position to adequately convey such inexplicable evil to a mass audience; Spielberg recognises and respects his awesome responsibility, and the result is a devastating lesson in the consequences of intolerance that's no less relevant now than it was 25 years ago.

27. GROUNDHOG DAY (Harold Ramis, 1993)
I've watched this over and over and over and over and over again but no matter what I do, it always ends up being hilarious, touching and totally brilliant.

26. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952)
An absolutely charming film, full of delightful songs and dances, that whimsically tells the tale of how three smug bastards conspire to publicly humiliate and destroy the career of an established actress, leading to her offscreen depression and eventual suicide.

25. KING KONG (Merian C Cooper & Ernest B Schoedsack, 1933)
Few monster movies have come close to the genius of the genre's grandaddy; most of them fail hopelessly at the first roar. Kong oozes personality thanks to the groundbreaking special effects, and that's why he's King.

24. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (Steve McQueen, 2013)

An astonishing true story of tenacity and endurance so harrowing and excruciating that it's near-unbearable, yet buoyed by hope and the kindness that exists in a world of horror.

23. GROSSE POINTE BLANK (George Armitage, 1997)
There's a reason why I connect with this film so hard but I'm not sure I want to know what it is. Cinema's most enjoyable existential crisis, featuring an adorable pair of leads with genuine chemistry, flawless support all round and shit hot action ("Thank you for the pen"), all set to a catalogue of '80s bangers. Popcorn!

22. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Alfredson pitches every moment of horror and trope of vampire lore with the accuracy of a marksman, slowly but inexorably building towards that triumphant and deliriously satisfying swimming pool scene. Gorgeously terrifying.

21. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Jared Hess, 2004)

Everything about this weird little gem is adorable. It has a bigger heart than romcoms and love stories with ten times the budget, and it's ridiculously funny to (sweet moon)boot. I love it like Tina loves ham.

20. DIE HARD (John McTiernan, 1988)
Nobody puts a glass-shredded foot wrong in this masterpiece of tension, wit and perplexing F-bombs. Still no idea what “I’ll kiss your FUCKIN’ dalmatian!” is supposed to mean.

19. THE GODFATHER PART II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
A sequel that fucked with the rules of what sequels were supposed to be, GF2 expands the Corleone legacy in every direction, all of them amazing.

18. THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
This insanely ambitious and lavish epic is so rich in detail and character that you can't afford it. Michael Corleone's arc might be the greatest combination of writing and acting in all of cinema. All critics please note I am putting this and Part II separately because THEY ARE TWO TOTALLY DISTINCT FILMS.

17. GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
Breathlessly entertaining and unconventionally structured, GoodFellas feels like the picture Scorsese had been building to since film school. A handful of his movies since have come close, but this would be the Lufthansa heist of his career: spectacular, audacious and long-investigated.

16. ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979)
Unbearably atmospheric pant-shitter that launched the movies' greatest heroine / villain combo. Shame Ridley Scott shat all over his own legacy worse than George Lucas ever did.

15. RAGING BULL (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Scorsese put himself into therapy with Raging Bull: a bruising comeback fight that spatters the director's own self-destructive tendencies across the canvas in stark, unforgiving monochrome.

14. THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

Buster Keaton’s greatest comedy is as dazzling now as it was 93 (NINETY-THREE) years ago. Still hard to believe it was all done for real, but it’s that blend of breathtaking stunts and timeless wit that makes it what it is, which is the 14th best film I’ve ever seen.

13. STAR WARS (George Lucas, 1977)
Still as magically exciting, beguiling and brilliant as ever. Obviously nostalgia is a massive variable in the Star Wars Amazingness Formula, but let's be honest, EVERYTHING works here.

12. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
The Empire Strikes Back deserves every ounce of pomp heaped on it over the last 40 years, and I'm not about to change that. Every character and their connections to each other are deepened, the significance of every action is dramatically weighty and everything is accomplished with cast iron confidence.

11. PSYCHO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
So Hitchcock it hurts, but Psycho is very much a team effort: the slicing score, crisp, high-contrast cinematography, flawless editing and Anthony Perkins' bewitching performance all stamp their own mark on the film. Even Janet Leigh's mascara feels like it should get its own credit.

10. THE 39 STEPS (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
Perhaps Hitchcock's most efficient thriller: an episodic odyssey in which an innocent chump-on-the-run is bounced from one adventure to another like an immaculately-moustachioed pinball, it swings from tragedy to comedy with breathless economy.

9. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
A Bond film from the girl's point of view, with Cary Grant as the girl and Eva Marie Saint as the secret agent using sex to further the mission. Hitchcock's slickest version of The 39 Steps surfs a rogue wave of ludicrous fun from start to finish.

8. ROPE (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)
Lip-smacking chamber piece about the smug entitlement of the over-privileged, and therefore never not relevant. Jimmy Stewart is incredible as the smart-arse who inadvertently radicalises a sycophantic psychopath; his final speech, in which he tries to extricate himself from his own terrible responsibility, is spine-tingling.

7. SE7EN (David Fincher, 1995)

The last great serial killer movie, and one which is as grand and horrific a statement of intent from its director as John Doe’s gruesome, misguided retribution is.

6. THE SHINING (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Not many horrors on this list because I’m a massive pussy and they’re mostly rubbish, but The Shining gets everything just right in its quest to entertain and terrify. It crawls under my skin and slowly picks my nerves apart until I can barely take it.

5. CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
I always get depressed after watching Casablanca because it feels like nothing else could possibly be as good so what’s the point? Turns out there are four films just as good, if not better, so this list hasn’t been a complete waste of time after all. (Narrator: "It has")

4. BACK TO THE FUTURE (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
Proof that if your script is good enough (and this one is flawless), you can make a great family film about a teenager who hangs around with a weird old man and actively encourages his mum to try and fuck him.

3. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
Heroes don't get more heroic than Indiana Jones, and his first outing is the greatest action adventure of all time, combining thrills and LOLs with copious Nazi-punching and Harrison Ford's winning everyman performance.

2. VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
A tall tale about a tall tale, with manipulated actors and sadistic directors in both, Vertigo's storytelling audacity and refusal to limit the depths to which it plunges its characters make it Hitchcock's most awful, brilliant achievement.

1. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Kubrick's greatest triumph is a beautiful, terrifying mindfuck that asks all the biggest questions and answers precisely none (except how to do a poo in zero gravity). For a film with almost no plot and whose only interesting character is a computer, It's a miracle 2001 is even watchable, let alone THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE ACCORDING TO THE INCREDIBLE SUIT WHICH IS TEN YEARS OLD TODAY.

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What have I missed? What should be number one? What have I got against the MCU? Leave your valued comments in the goddamn toilet where they belong.

Kubism, Part 7: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

We're roughly half way through our nursery school-level investigation of the films of Stanley Kubrick, and it's been a bumpy ride so far. We've seen the good (The Killing, Paths Of Glory, Lolita), the bad (Fear And Desire, Spartacus, oh God The Seafarers) and the middling (Killer's Kiss), and so it seems appropriate that this time round we're faced with The Kube's most divisive film. Which is to say that there's a dividing line between most of the world, who love it, and me. It is a cause of some personal concern, but even after multiple viewings I have yet to learn to stop worrying and love Dr. Strangelove; for me it is not quite the bomb.

Troubled by an early '60s political landscape that boasted such anxiety-inducing events as the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, increasing tensions in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall, the Bay Of Pigs and everything else from that verse of We Didn't Start The Fire, Stanley Kubrick decided to make a nuclear war drama based on the thriller novel Red Alert. Finding everything about the situation inherently ridiculous, he transformed the book's serious tone into a comedy that would define cinematic satire for a generation and successfully piss off every stars-and-stripes-waving believer in the might of the US military who saw it. Using his beloved war genre as a stick to poke the hornets' nest of political hubris, Kubrick predicted every fatal decision made in the world's war rooms for the next half-century and beyond, and he did it on his own terms and in his own, inimitable style. But Kubrick's style is inimitable because it's so damn hard to pin down, and in my worthless and unsolicited opinion, even he struggled to nail the tone this time.

With the mandatory Kubrickian introductory voiceover (and my equally compulsory mention of it) out of the way, Dr. Strangelove launches its attack on conservative morality with its opening titles. Airborne sexy time between large phallic objects is graphically depicted, as long tubes penetrate openings and release essential fluids in order to ensure continued survival: strange love indeed. I mean it's just some planes refuelling mid-air, but read into it what you like you dirty old perv. This kind of innuendo runs the length of the film like a thick dorsal vein, and film scholars point to it as an example of Kubrick's sophisticated humour. Fair enough. If you ask me it's just a bunch of knob jokes that don't bear any relation to the plot; at least North By Northwest's hilariously crass train-fucking-a-tunnel visual gag came at the climax of a film that was vaguely sexy.

Things get going with the trademark efficiency of early Kubrick, as Sterling Hayden's paranoid loon Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base (you be the judge as to the comedy value of names in this film) authorises a wave of nuclear attacks on Russian targets because he thinks Commies are sabotaging his spunk. Trying to talk sense into Ripper is Peter Sellers' RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a genuinely excellent take on stereotypical British reserve whose stiff upper lip is adorned with the most splendid moustache in the Kubrick canon.

In the skies above Russia, one of Ripper's nuke-laden B-52 bombers - piloted by an apparent Texan hayseed whose patois is amusing in and of itself but otherwise of little narrative value - receives the order to unleash nuclear hell. Its crew (including a young Darth Vader who looks nothing like Hayden Christensen) go about the business of prepping armageddon and reading Playboy, but serve no other useful function until their final moments.

And then there's the third of Dr. Strangelove's trio of locations to which Kubrick experimentally limits his story. The War Room at the Pentagon is a glorious Ken Adam creation built to house the best and worst of the film's scenes, which scuffle with each other for supremacy despite the strict No Fighting In The War Room rule. An orgy of geometry, the War Room is impossible to view as anything other than a lair of lunatics once you've seen Adam's similar work on the crackpots' cribs of the Bond films. Of course that only retrospectively enhances the madness that takes place within the confines of Kubrick's film, as President Merkin Muffley (lol) argues with General Buck Turgidson (haha) and tries to placate Russian premier Dimitri Kissoff (good one) over the impending accidental annihilation of the human race.

It's here that the highlights of Dr. Strangelove - Muffley's excruciatingly polite phone calls to his Soviet counterpart - are beautifully executed. Sellers is on gold standard form as the Pres, awkwardly explaining the actions of his unhinged military leaders while literally and figuratively isolated in a pool of light from that ironic halo of illumination slung above the table. We never hear Kissoff's replies, leaving Sellers to carry the scene by himself with effortless comedy genius. Which makes it all the more disappointing when the third of his characters in the film emerges from a gloomy corner: the titular Dr. S, a grating creation who seems to have fallen out of a bad Monty Python sketch and landed badly enough to render himself comedically disabled.

Kubrick famously (and rightly) excised a prologue featuring bewildered aliens and an epilogue showcasing a titanic custard pie fight from his movie because they didn't belong, and it's a shame he didn't punt Strangelove in the same direction. Turning up nearly an hour into the film and occupying just two scenes and under nine minutes of screen time, the character isn't around long enough to enhance the story but is nevertheless overbearing enough to knock the whole project off-axis from subtle satire to eye-rolling slapstick. It's the most obvious symptom of the film's mixed comedic tone, which on the one hand brings us subtle visual gags like Turgidson's "World Targets In Megadeaths" manual, then on the other forces upon us a soldier called Colonel Bat Guano (my sides!) shooting a Coke machine and getting sprayed in the face in painfully punchline-reinforcing close-up.

But it's not just the comedy that doesn't hit its intended target for me; I just can't engage with Dr. Strangelove on any level beyond admiration of Ken Adam's sets and two-thirds of Peter Seller's work. The film seems to limp from scene to scene without much plot, until it just stops - quite mercifully, frankly - in the middle of one of the bad doctor's teeth-itching routines. None of the characters are developed any further than the point at which we meet them, and there's nothing of any complexity under any of their skins. I appreciate Strangelove's themes and I admire the satire, but I genuinely think I would get more enjoyment watching a documentary in which Donald Trump has to phone Vladimir Putin to apologise for not having nuked the whole of North America yet. That's the trouble with satire: once the absurdity of reality overtakes it, it's essentially toothless.

Of course it's still Stanley Kubrick and therefore still of some contextual value. The Kube's powerful but flawed, incompetent men are everywhere, and the destructive power of macho vanity reaches its spectacular apotheosis between the legs of a ten-gallon-hat-waving, yee-hawing cowboy as he finally achieves wargasm. While men are shown to be dangerous idiots though, women are still being sidelined altogether, despite Lolita successfully wrapping every man she encountered round her little finger. Like Paths Of Glory, Dr. Strangelove manages just one female character, and she's a secretary lounging around in a bikini waiting to be fucked because she's got nothing else to do.

Perhaps the most interesting concept within Dr. Strangelove is the advent of mechanisation and automation in Kubrick's cinema. The trust placed by mankind in the technology he's developed proves tragically misplaced when it experiences the most simplistic failure, and the implications of that would form the basis of his next and arguably greatest film. That human/mechanical dichotomy would also surface in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the long-gestating project he eventually handed over to Steven Spielberg, who took it down a considerably more emotional route than Kubrick might have done. Keen-eyed audiences will also note that neither 2001 nor A.I. feature Peter Sellers shouting in an OTT German accent, so I suppose we should thank Dr. Strangelove for helping Stanley Kubrick get that out of his system.

Join me again soon(ish) for 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film set so far in the future that none of us will ever be qualified to remark on its accuracy.

← Part 6: Lolita

Part 8: 2001: A Space Odyssey →

Every Hitchcock film watched, rated and ranked by a man with nothing better to do

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At the beginning of 2015 I made a decision to finally do something useful with my life. I considered training as a doctor, joining the UN peacekeeping force or volunteering to undergo medical trials for life-saving drugs, before dismissing such fripperies and landing upon my true calling: I would selflessly watch every film Alfred Hitchcock ever directed, then write a few words about each one, assign them an arbitrary number of stars and shuffle them into a vague order of preference. My knighthood is merely a formality at this stage.

Here, then, are my findings from the past thirteen months, 52 features and two short films (I also watched - but haven't included - the musical film revue Elstree Calling, of which Hitch only directed part and which he abruptly stated was "of no interest whatsoever". Turns out he was bang on). The films are presented in reverse order of non-rubbishness in an attempt to elicit a false sense of excitement as the reader approaches the end, although the number one film will almost certainly come as a surprise to precisely nobody.

If you'd like to follow in my heroic and Herculean footsteps but can't quite be arsed to watch all 54 films, I can recommend avoiding anything before, say, number 40 on this list because life is short and you'll be dead soon. Everything after that though, especially from number 20 onwards, is essential viewing for every living human being and you should be ashamed of yourself if you haven't had a go on them. So here we go; if you make it all the way to the end you'll be rewarded with one of my favourite photos of Mr Hitchcock ever taken. Bon voyage!

54.

UK, 1930

The Boyle family have almost as dreadful a time of the Irish Civil War as we do watching them. Restricted by the source material and this new-fangled sound technology (despite having totally made it his bitch in the previous year's Blackmail), Hitchcock turns out a tediously-told soap opera filmed with all the energy of half a pint of weak stout. The kind of thing you should only watch if for some reason you're on a mission to watch every film Hitch directed, no matter how abysmal. «

53.

UK, 1928, silent

Another early duffer. Some nice, Hitch-y touches, but it's sloppily plotted and almost every character is a dick or an idiot or both. «

52.

UK, 1928, silent

Tedious farce which signposts its ending in the first ten minutes and makes you sit through acres of lumpy old bollocks before its big non-reveal. «

51.

US, 1941

Hitchcock's only attempt at flat-out comedy contains precisely one good gag. Frenzy is funnier. In fact Paul Blart: Mall Cop is funnier. «

50.

UK, 1930

Sluggish, poorly-plotted whodunnit which makes the basic error of focusing entirely on the investigator and almost completely ignoring all the suspects, thereby leaving the audience utterly in the dark about who anybody's talking about. Herbert Marshall is good value though, the great plummy toff. ««

49.

UK, 1931

Edmund Gwenn and his Yorkshire-via-Wandsworth accent are the best things in this forgettable early effort. The plot's sordid secrets and Phyllis Konstam's cleavage evidently aroused Hitch's sensibilities, but there are basic errors here that you wouldn't expect from the man who had already made The Lodger and Blackmail. ««

48.

UK, 1944, short

The second of Hitchcock's wartime shorts (I would love to see Hitch wearing his wartime shorts) is a primer on the political turmoil in WWII-era Madagascar at best; the dull reminiscences of a boring old man at worst. ««

47.

UK, 1927, silent

Hitchcock wants to take us - via spoilt rich kid and victim of blind, stupid loyalty Ivor Novello - on an odyssey from the heights of privilege (public school rugby team) to the depths of misery (having to shack up with some black people) and back again. But it's hard to sympathise when Novello's character is so dull and his journey rarely takes him outside the bosom of high society. Too few intertitles make this an often confusing and drawn-out watch, although there are some lovely visuals scattered throughout. ««

46.

UK, 1949

Somewhere in the depths of Hitchcock's filmography sits this leaden costume drama, a curio which looks as baffled as the rest of us about what it's doing there. There's almost no evidence of Hitch's presence, bar a handful of impressive long takes and the whiff of Rebecca and Notorious hanging around Margaret Leighton's treacherous, heroine-poisoning housekeeper. The scenes in which Ingrid Bergman sports a pink bonnet that makes it appear as if she's emerging head-first from a giant vagina do surprisingly little to lighten the mood. ««

45.

UK, 1950

Dull and miscast, with only a fun but pointless scene between Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell to raise the spirits. Also I've never understood the appeal of Marlene Dietrich. She sounds like Phyllis off Coronation Street. ««

44.

US, 1966

A strangely cold and flat affair, Torn Curtain runs out of good ideas half way through and fills the rest of its interminable running time with bad ones, most of which take twice as long to unfold as necessary. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews have all the chemistry of a pair of damp socks. ««

43.

US, 1947

Overlong and underplotted legal drama with plenty of legal but precious little in the way of drama. Constantly on the verge of making a point about the honour and duty of love and the law but never quite getting there, this is only really worth watching for Gregory Peck's immaculate suits and hair, and Charles Laughton's disgusting windbag judge. ««

42.

 

UK, 1927, silent

Slight but curious early silent, in which the director who would eventually allow untold horrors to befall innumerable heroines pits two headstrong women against each other, surrounding them with weak, flawed men. Notable for some ingenious visual flourishes (a marriage proposal acceptance delivered over the phone is conveyed to the audience entirely via the reactions of the eavesdropping operator), and perhaps Hitchcock's first overbearing mother. «««

41.

US, 1941

In all fairness, if my husband was a lying, cheating sociopath and possibly a murderer BUT was Cary Grant, I'd be stupidly in love with him too. «««

40.

UK/Germany, 1926, silent

Hitchcock's first completed feature escalates from frothy, London-based romance to fever-fuelled crimes of passion in the tropics in just one silent, zippily-edited hour. A morality play about two couples and their interweaving destinies, The Pleasure Garden contains many of the thematic tropes with which the 25-year-old director would become synonymous: adultery, betrayal, love, lust, madness, marriage, melodrama, misogyny and murder, to alphabetise but a few.

But it's the sleight-of-hand storytelling that's most impressive in retrospect: Hitch employs foreshadowing and subtle visual motifs to knit the drama together, and alongside editor (and wife-to-be) Alma Reville, he shows a preternatural command of cutting and dramatic irony to create suspense. Even his obsession with voyeurism is present and correct - the opening scene of his 54-film canon gives us a dirty old man leering through opera glasses at the legs of a chorus line, then thrusts us into his point of view before we've barely had chance to register disgust. This guy is one to watch. «««

39.

UK, 1931

A darkly cynical romcom: one-third frothy travelogue, one-third adultery drama, one-third survival movie. Gags about being drunk improbably give way to unsavoury depictions of inscrutable, cat-skinning Chinamen, but Hitch - even at this early stage - firmly believes nothing he could come up with is as ludicrous as the concept of marriage. «««

38.

US, 1964

Wholly unpleasant but strangely compelling psychosexual nonsense that feels like the ham-fisted evil twin to Vertigo's classy, subtle freakshow. Tippi Hedren is near-intolerable and Sean Connery's character is barely human, so it's mostly as a morbidly fascinating peek through the fingers into the darkest depths of Hitchcock's psyche that this remains watchable. «««

37.

UK, 1929, silent

A middling Hitchcock silent, this steamy melodrama benefits from enthusiastic leads and gorgeous photography, not least of Anny Ondra. Amazing shots of the Isle Of Man, which were actually done in Cornwall, fact fans. «««

36.

UK, 1932

Great to see Hitchcock, who would come to use cinema as his own personal train set, construct the entire climax of this early talkie using an actual train set. Forget LEGO; this is The Hornby Movie. «««

35.

UK, 1936

Near-plotless spy flick almost completely derailed by Peter Lorre going absolutely mentile throughout, casting everyone else into the shadow of his pube-haired loon. Hitch keeps the action going and the dialogue is witty enough to maintain the interest, but the bafflingly sloppy ending is emblematic of the weak script. «««

34.

US, 1955

Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are inhumanly beautiful and immaculately attired (we'll overlook Grant's stripy top on account of his uncanny ability to wear trousers) but this is sub-par Hitchfroth. «««

33.

US, 1955

I think the lesson we can all learn from this is that upon meeting a gorgeous, elfin princess like Shirley Maclaine, the opening line "I'd like to paint you nude" is a surefire winner and definitely won't get you slapped into next week. «««

32.

US, 1953

Catholic Guilt: The Movie. Contains all the shots of Montgomery Clift striding round Quebec in a cassock you could possibly hope for, and then some. «««

31.

UK, 1929

A juicy stew of sex, murder, betrayal and comedy, Hitchcock's (and Britain's) first talkie is as inventive with sound as The Lodger was with visuals, making you wonder exactly how big the balls were on that guy. That said, the silent version (which occasionally pops up at screenings with a fantastic live score by Neil Brand) is arguably slicker and is screaming out - albeit silently - for a BFI Blu-ray release. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME BFI? «««

30.

US, 1969

Overlong but pleasingly twisty globetrotting Cold War thriller. Unusual for Hitchcock to focus on politics rather than people; the experiment is probably only half successful but the film is better than its reputation suggests. Plus "Anyway, that's the end of Topaz" has to be one of the best final lines in cinema. «««

29.

UK, 1937

Hitchcock cooks up some great moments (the mine collapse, the enormous crane shot), but they don't knit the story together as well as in The 39 Steps, of which this was the first of many near-remakes. Young And Innocent also contains far too many awful children for my liking. «««

28.

US, 1954

Hitchcock's stagiest filming of a play since his early talkies is still cheekily cinematic in its own way, but suffers in comparison to meatier adaptations like Rope. Dial M For Murder's comically convoluted plot (which could have been written by the two murder-mystery-obsessed old geezers from Shadow Of A Doubt) renders it over-talky, and Hitch works miracles to stop it from drowning in its own dialogue. That said, it's hard not to love a film that concludes with a scene of such gloriously smug moustache combing. «««

27.

US, 1956

All of Hitchcock's Catholic guilt and fear of the police distilled into one brutally depressing film; every shred of hope and joy is stripped from the story, rendering the "happy ending" hollow and impossible to appreciate. Powerful stuff, but hard to enjoy. «««

26.

UK, 1927, silent

Stunningly shot and edited - much more so than many of Hitchcock's successive silents - and, considering the soap opera plot, the melodrama is pitched just right. Hard to ignore a couple of moments of deeply unpleasant racism though, and the conclusion is disappointing. «««

25.

US, 1976

Hitchcock's final film is warmly charming and wonderfully played (mostly by William Devane's teeth), but lacks the Master's precision touch. Frenzy would have been the better film to leave us with, but this makes for a pleasing enough epilogue to an unmatched career. «««

24.

UK, 1944, short

Nicely convoluted wartime short, deftly intertwining the Unreliable Narrator device with shameless propaganda. ««««

23.

UK, 1939

Charles Laughton is the gas giant around which Daphne Du Maurier's twisty Cornish melodrama orbits. Undeservedly treated as a lesser Hitchcock, but the two big men ensure a far more entertaining watch than its reputation suggests. ««««

22.

US, 1942

A slicker Americanisation of The 39 Steps, Saboteur fails to recapture that film's edge and propulsive nature but still features some tremendous wrong-man-on-the-lam action. Interesting to see the words "sabotage" and "saboteur" employed where a modern-day version would have to use "terrorism" and "terrorist". ««««

21.

UK, 1934

Discovering that Alfred Hitchcock made a fictional musical biopic-slash-romcom about Johann Strauss II and the genesis of the Blue Danube Waltz is bonkers enough; finding out that it's actually great is almost too good to be true. Structurally immaculate (the buildup to the first performance of the Waltz is like Casino Royale's teasing of the Bond theme), genuinely funny and full of Hitch's trademark directorial flourishes, this is proof that he wasn't as inept at out-and-out comedy as Mr & Mrs Smith suggests. Top marks too to moon-faced lead Jessie Matthews, the 1930s' very own Rachel McAdams. ««««

20.

UK, 1936

The bus sequence alone is enough to recommend Sabotage to anyone as a masterclass in montage. Hitch always felt he got the scene's climax wrong, but what does he know? Nothing, that's what. Idiot. ««««

19.

UK, 1934

Hitchcock's second truly great film, but the first to perfect the thrills+LOLs formula for which he would become famous - largely thanks to writer Charles Bennett, who provides the first of a run of terrific scripts here. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a proto-Taken, in which the kidnapped girl's pop is a man with no particular set of skills besides chair-hurling. Peter Lorre gives great sneer as the first charming yet repulsive Hitch baddie. ««««

18.

US, 1943

The plot's a bit thin - girl thinks the world of uncle, girl changes her mind - but kudos to Hitch for bringing murder into the home where it belongs, and for doing it so stylishly. I want to see that slow zoom into Joseph Cotten's face at the dinner table projected a thousand feet high. ««««

17.

US, 1945

Wacky murder mystery that sags in its middle act but boasts a cracking setup and an even better finale, where shocking revelations are matched by bonkers gimmicks: the giant prop hand is more terrifying than most of Psycho. The dream sequence, designed by none other than Salvador Dalí, lends Spellbound a touch of genuine surrealism that balances out its amateurish representation of psychoanalysis. ««««

16.

US, 1956

Inevitably slicker and glossier than Hitchcock's own original, with some improvements (Jimmy Stewart & Doris Day rank among the greatest movie parents you'd want as your own) but less bone-dry humour. The dialogue-free Albert Hall sequence - a nod to Hitch's origins in silent cinema - is a ruddy triumph. Will test your tolerance of "Que Sera, Sera" to its absolute limits though. ««««

15.

UK, 1972

Drags on a bit, and thoroughly nasty in places, but a refreshing twist on the Wrong Man subgenre that Hitchcock made his own. Instead of a cross-country travelogue, Frenzy restricts the action to London, making it a grim picture postcard of Hitch's home town. His attitudes towards the police seem to have softened in his autumn years - they're humanised and allowed to solve the crime here, despite initial incompetence - but his arguable misogyny has deepened, and although the second murder is masterfully only hinted at, there's a troubling relish with which he portrays the first victim's horrific fate. Directed like a ruddy boss though. ««««

14.

US, 1944

Hitchcock invents claustrocore, populating his tiny, internalised drama with vast, all-encompassing issues. Never stagey despite its obvious limitations, Lifeboat drifts close to greatness, only not quite landing due to a couple of clichéd characters and the odd thunk of heavy-handed dialogue. I do not exaggerate when I say that Mary Anderson, as Chief Sexy Medic, may well be Hitch's most desirable woman. ««««

13.

US, 1951

Only a couple of daft plot convolutions and the odd underwritten character deny Strangers On A Train entry to Hitchcock's first class carriage. Robert Walker is so understatedly mad and beautifully creepy as the villain that he shunts Farley Granger and Ruth Roman (and their one-note characters) to the sidings, but there's so much to love here - the shot of Walker in the tennis crowd, the nonsense with the lighter and the drain, the comically overblown climax - that Hitch very nearly gets away with it. ««««

12.

US, 1940

Hitchcock puts his sense of humour to one side for a sumptuous melodrama featuring two of his greatest villains, one of whom is never even seen. Laurence Olivier's hero / victim and Joan Fontaine's innocent party, forced to assume the role of a dead woman, make this a twisted precursor to Vertigo, with Mrs Danvers as the leading man's uncontainable dark side. «««««

11.

UK, 1926, silent

Hitchcock's third film is his first masterpiece (I assume, not having seen his long-lost second feature, The Mountain Eagle); a mesmerising combination of German Expressionism, Hollywood stylings and distinctly British humour. Hitch draws attention to his own visual precociousness with shots like the famous glass ceiling, but it's the early mastery of composition and editing - along with Eliot Stannard's tightly-constructed script - that speak for themselves. Even Ivor Novello's decision to occasionally act as if he has an awkwardly-shaped object stuck up his bottom can't spoil the mood. «««««

10.

US, 1946

With impressively tight storytelling across a bare minimum of scenes, Hitchcock handles the script's various discoveries and revelations impeccably, driving the film to its perfect climax in typically classy style. Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains are untouchable. «««««

9.

UK, 1938

A deliciously tongue-in-cheek love letter to Hitchcock's fellow countrymen, The Lady Vanishes simultaneously embraces and mercilessly lampoons the idiosyncracies of the English like a 1930s Paddington. "Snookered, it's a false bottom!" may be the greatest exclamation of stiff-upper-lipped disappointment in cinema. «««««

8.

US, 1940

Frequently and criminally overlooked in the Hitchcanon, this belting wartime thriller racks up more inventive set-pieces, humour and diabolical intrigue than most of its modern-day counterparts; the sixteen-minute Amsterdam sequence alone is slicker and more exciting than anything Ethan Hunt or James Bond have managed recently. And rarely did Hitch gather a better supporting cast: Edmund Gwenn, George Sanders and Herbert Marshall add unforgettable sparkle to the comparatively dull leads (although Joel McCrea clambering outside hotel windows in sock suspenders is an undeniable joy). «««««

7.

US, 1954

I think I'm more impressed by how Rear Window was made rather than the end product, but it's undeniably unique filmmaking (if you don't count the Christopher Reeve remake). The way Jimmy Stewart pieces a murder mystery together from the available information is a delicious reflection of Hitchcock's own storytelling technique. A film about films, full of tiny cinema screens, told by a master manipulator. «««««

6.

US, 1963

Hitchcock's fourth masterpiece in a row (and his last) ends cinema's most phenomenal purple patch in technically breathtaking style. I still don't know if the birds attack because it's their turn to rule the world, because Melanie Daniels is a dangerous and disruptive sexual threat or because Veronica Cartwright is an excruciating brat, but I find that I care less and less with every viewing. It seems to me that Hitch just wanted to tell a story about men and women, mothers and children, and birds and bees, but thought it would be fun to frequently interrupt their efforts to work out their issues by chucking hundreds of bastard seagulls at them. «««««

5.

US, 1960

Considering Hitchcock's rep as one of cinema's auteuriest auteurs, it's surprising how much several individuals' contributions to Psycho leap out at you: Bernard Herrmann's slicing score is the obvious one, but Jack Russell's crisp, high-contrast cinematography, George Tomasini's flawless editing and Anthony Perkins' bewitching performance all stamp their own mark on the film. Even Janet Leigh's mascara feels like it should get its own credit. There’s no mistaking the Master’s chubby fingerprints on every frame though, and each viewing throws up a previously unnoticed flourish: this time I found myself mesmerised by the clouds behind the Bates house, which seem to roil and boil with satanic fury. Did Hitch direct those clouds? Don’t bet against it. «««««

4.

UK, 1935

Leaner, richer, funnier and cleverer than its already-impressive source material, The 39 Steps is perhaps Hitchcock's most efficient thriller. An episodic odyssey in which innocent chump-on-the-run Richard Hannay is bounced from one adventure to another like an immaculately-moustachioed pinball, it swings from tragedy to comedy with breathless economy. Hitch revisited the premise half a dozen times over the rest of his career, but could only improve upon the original (arguably) by enlisting Cary Grant, James Mason and four dead presidents. «««««

3.

US, 1959

A Bond film from the girl's point of view, with Cary Grant as the girl and Eva Marie Saint as the secret agent using sex to further the mission. Hitchcock's slickest version of The 39 Steps surfs a rogue wave of ludicrous fun from start to finish; so concerned is it with the chase that the MacGuffin isn't so much as mentioned until 90 minutes have passed, as if Hitch felt he should probably drop it in somewhere before the end credits. Everyone talks about the grey suit (quite rightly - remember, nobody wears trousers like Cary Grant) but never forget that Roger Thornhill's yellow underpants go unchanged for the four-day duration of the story. «««««

2.

US, 1948

Lip-smacking chamber piece about the smug entitlement of the over-privileged, and therefore never not relevant. Jimmy Stewart is incredible as the smart-arse who inadvertently radicalises a sycophantic psychopath; his final speech, in which he tries to extricate himself from his own terrible responsibility, is spine-tingling. Amazingly shot too, given the insane restrictions Hitchcock placed on himself for no other reason than to see if he could. It's almost as if he thought he was the only one superior enough to carry out such a risky endeavour. «««««

BONUS CONTENT! Listen to me wang on about Rope on the very excellent 90 Minutes Or Less Film Fest podcast, if you like.

1.

US, 1958

There's something about Vertigo that sets it apart from every other Hitchcock - if not every other film - from the very beginning. The opening titles and music drag you down into its tragic, twisted world, and there you stay, hypnotically repulsed by exquisitely-wrought cruelty until (and beyond) its brutal finish. A tall tale about a tall tale, with manipulated actors and sadistic directors in both, Vertigo's storytelling audacity and refusal to limit the depths to which it plunges its characters make it Hitch's most awful, brilliant achievement. «««««

Congratulations, you made it! Unless of course you just scrolled to the bottom because you couldn't be arsed to read all that, in which case you are a terrible person and I hope you painfully stub your toe on something while getting up for a wee in the middle of the night.