griggs's - Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time 2022 List

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'Petite Maman' is a sublime modern fairytale about the quiet wonder of mother-daughter relationships. After the death of her beloved grandmother (Margot Abascal), eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) meets a mysterious friend in the woods.

Together they embark on a fantastical journey of discovery which helps Nelly come to terms with this newfound loss. Celine Sciamma's new masterwork examines childhood, memory and loss with a typically delicate touch, elegantly weaved together into an enchanting and moving depiction of love and acceptance.

The film follows the daily life of Vanda Duarte, a heroin addict, in the shanty outskirts of Lisbon. The film's focus is also on the community of the district and its townscape.

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After Wyatt Earp's (Henry Fonda) brother James is murdered by cattle rustlers, the frontier legend becomes Tombstone's marshal and sets out to avenge the younger man's death.

Torn between his badge and his fury, Earp confronts the likely killers, the notoriously lawless family of Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), setting the stage for the famed shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. Along the way, Earp falls in love with a schoolteacher named Clementine (Cathy Downs), which pits him against the cantankerous Doc Holliday. While 'My Darling Clementine' never loses its dynamism as a hard-hitting western, it is also a tender love story.

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A film about the artistic process in every sense of the phrase, Spanish director Victor Erice's 'El Sol del Mebrillo' (The Quince Tree Sun) loosely documents the efforts of artist Antonio Lopez to paint the titular foliage in his backyard.

Lopez agonizes over just how to capture the light falling on the tree's leaves; he aspires to complete the painting before the fruit falls at the end of the season. Meanwhile, the artist is distracted by unannounced visitors, the debate over the Gulf War, and the filmmaker himself. Sol begins in documentary form, with voiceover narration from Lopez himself, then slowly takes on other qualities: slightly staged narrative storytelling; hypnotic, dream-like nature film; and philosophical meditation on art and mortality.

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Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), is one of Manhattan's most brilliant comedians, but when it comes to romance, his delivery needs a little work.

Introduced by his best friend, Rob (Tony Roberts), to the ditzy but delightful nightclub singer, Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), no sooner is Alvy in love, when his own insecurities sabotage the affair, forcing Annie to leave Alvy for a new life - and lover (Paul Simon) - in Los Angeles. Knowing he may have lost Annie forever, Alvy's willing to go to any lengths - even driving L.A.'s freeways - to recapture the only thing that ever mattered...true love.

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Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, 'Pandora's Box' tells the story of sex worker Lulu (Louise Brooks), a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu's latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr.

Ludwig Schdn (Fritz Kortner), announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon's son, Aiwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu seduces Schon once more - only to have their tryst exposed, and Schon's plans for a more socially acceptable marriage shattered. Left with no choice but to marry Lulu, Schon meets with tragedy on their wedding night. Lulu stands trial for the incident, facing years of imprisonment. With the aid of her former pimp (Carl Goetz), an infatuated lesbian countess (Alice Roberts) and Aiwa, she flees toward a fate of increasing squalor and peril, finally crossing paths one Christmas Eve with Jack the Ripper.

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A native of Mauritania is delighted when he is chosen to work in Paris. Hoping to parlay the experience into a better life for himself, he eagerly prepares for his departure from his native land. Although an educated man, he has extreme difficulty finding work and an apartment.

He sees racial inequity as blacks are relegated to manual labor while less skilled whites are given preferential treatment. A dinner with a liberal white friend even reveals a continuing attitude of colonization towards third world countries. The disappointed man runs off to the woods where he hears the far off cry of the jungle drums calling him home from a cold and indifferent land.

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Drawn from his own family memories, 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' is a strikingly intimate portrait of working class life in 1940's and 1950's Liverpool.

Focusing on the real-life experiences of his mother, sisters and brother whose lives are thwarted by their brutal, sadistic father (a chilling performance by Pete Postlethwaite), the film shows us beauty and terror in equal measure. Davies uses the traditional family gatherings of births, marriages and deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of family life - of love, grief, and the highs and lows of being human, a 'poetry of the everyday' that is at once deeply autobiographical and universally resonant.

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Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) is a 21 year old supermarket worker from a small port town in the west of Scotland. Morvern believes that life is something that you get on with as best you can with what you've got.

one morning, Morvern finds that what she's got is a dead boyfriend on the kitchen floor...

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Comedy director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to give up his life of luxury and sets off on the road to research how the other half live. He plans to make "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", a somber, social conscious movie inspired by his experiences of poverty and desperation.

A chance encounter with failed starlet (Veronica Lake) enables him to escape the studio publicity machine and learn at first hand the true value of entertainment.

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Sidney Trebor (Gregoire Colin) cuts an enigmatic figure; an emotionally distant man who prefers the company of his dogs. His contact with other people is limited to an affair with a local pharmacist (Bambou) and a wordless attraction to a beautiful and equally aloof dog breeder (Beatrice Dalle).

An ailing heart forces Trebor have a black-market transplant. He recovers and travels to the bustling shipyards of Pusan in Korea, buys a boat and voyages south to his former home on a remote island near Tahiti. Here, he searches for the lost son he fathered years before. However he is uncertain of the welcome he will receive after all these years.

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Meant to take place in the near future, this film looks at the rights of women under a socialist society in the U.S. - and finds nothing has changed. Accompanied by a strong musical soundtrack, the composition of women's groups is explored - from the most conservative to the most revolutionary.

And given the events in the film, it would appear that only revolution is going to work in the future if women really want to achieve equality with men in terms of power, recognition, and influence.

Syndromes and a Century offers two separate stories or fragments set in hospitals, one rural and possibly in the past, one urban and possibly in the future. Or perhaps both are the same, at different periods, and the second set of characters reincarnations of the first.

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Dovzhenko's landmark 'film poem' style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukranian workers, examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life, death, violence, sex and other issues as they relate to the collective farms.

An idealistic vision of the possibilities of communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated, 'Earth' was viewed negatively by many soviets because of its portrayal of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.

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In a rural community of grinding economic and spiritual poverty, where poaching and delivering bootleg liquor supplement meagre incomes and love is absent, Mouchette is endlessly abused.

She cares selflessly and without thanks for her family as her mother slowly dies, whilst she is humiliated by a teacher for singing out of tune, is called a slut by a shopkeeper and even, as she is about to speak to a young man who smiled at her on the dodgems, is slapped by her harsh, judgemental father. Finally, having sought to help the epileptic poacher Arsene, she is raped by him. Even then, she later protects him. Mouchette may not understand all that she experiences but nor is she a helpless victim. She cares for her mother and especially for her infant sibling. Ostracised by her cruel classmates, she retaliates, throwing mud at them. She also avenges herself against the woman who speaks with pious reverence of the dead and who offers Mouchette a funeral shroud for her mother and a dress for herself.