Well, well, well — the latest iteration of Sight & Sound’s decennial poll is here, and if you thought the last one upset the applecart by displacing Citizen Kane at #1 for the first time in 50 years, this edition has flipped the cart over, set it on fire, pushed it off a cliff, and dropped a nuke on it for good measure.

Okay, maybe that’s a slightly exaggeration — the previous top two are still both in the top three — but the new #1 is a bit out of leftfield. Sure, it’s a film that’s fairly well known in cinephile circles (though I’ve seen multiple people on Film Twitter confess to never having heard of it), but to normies it probably sounds like something that’s been made up as a spoof of The Kind Of Film That Tops These Lists: it’s a 3-and-a-half-hour Belgian film about a woman doing household chores.

While I imagine regular folk are getting mad about that in comments sections across the internet (it’s also directed by a woman, which will undoubtedly have set off a certain kind of comment section dweller), Film Twitter seems to have largely taken the news in its stride, instead choosing to get worked up about the inclusion of very recent films, like Portrait of a Lady on Fire at #30, Moonlight at #60, Parasite at #90, and Get Out at #95. Can any film so new be already deserving of a place on a list of the greatest films ever made? Some people think not, reckoning a movie needs a good length of time to settle in to a place in ‘the canon’. Others say why wait? A great movie is a great movie.

Personally, I tend towards the latter; especially in a poll like this, which is the results of thousands of individual top tens, not of a group of people sitting down together to hash out every inclusion and their relative merits. I mean, if you saw Get Out on its release five years ago, but only watched Citizen Kane for the first time last week, which do you have a longer-considered personal opinion on? Sure, you know the latter is a long-assessed Great Movie, but how much should that matter in your personal assessment? Such external knowledge isn’t necessarily a negative when processing your own reaction to a movie, but if we were only ever allowed to consider certified classics as classics, nothing would ever change. If enough individuals consider Portrait of a Lady on Fire to be in their personal top ten movies that, when all the votes are added up, it places 30th overall, why is there anything wrong with that?

On a personal note, despite a raft of changes throughout the 100 (a good many previously-well-established films have plummeted out of the list, replaced by brand-new entries), the number I myself have seen goes from 72 to… 73.

The issue of Sight & Sound with their full write-up of the poll is out next week, and can be preordered here (with four covers to choose from). The full list, and at least some of the related writing, can be found online here — and summarised below, of course. As with last time, I’ve copied Sight & Sound’s ordering for ties (still don’t know their methodology), I’ve used the same titles as them for non-English films (some have changed since the last poll), and any links are to my own reviews (either here or on Letterboxd).

11) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
12) The Godfather (1972)
13) La Règle du jeu (1939)
14) Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
15) The Searchers (1956)
16) Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
17) Close-Up (1989)
18) Persona (1966)
19) Apocalypse Now (1979)
20) Seven Samurai (1954)
21=) The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927)
21=) Late Spring (1949)
23) Playtime (1967)
24) Do the Right Thing (1989)
25=) Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
25=) The Night of the Hunter (1955)
27) Shoah (1985)
28) Daisies (1966)
29) Taxi Driver (1976)
30) Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
31=) 8½ (1963)
31=) Mirror (1974)
31=) Psycho (1960)
34) L’Atalante (1934)
35) Pather Panchali (1955)
36=) City Lights (1931)
36=) M (1931)
38=) À bout de souffle (1960)
38=) Some Like It Hot (1959)
38=) Rear Window (1954)
41=) Bicycle Thieves (1948)
41=) Rashomon (1950)
43=) Stalker (1979)
43=) Killer of Sheep (1977)
45=) Barry Lyndon (1975)
45=) The Battle of Algiers (1966)
45=) North by Northwest (1959)
48=) Ordet (1955)
48=) Wanda (1970)
50=) The 400 Blows (1959)
50=) The Piano (1992)
52=) Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
52=) News from Home (1976)
54=) Le Mépris (1963)
54=) Blade Runner (1982)
54=) Battleship Potemkin (1925)
54=) The Apartment (1960)
54=) Sherlock Jr. (1924)
59) Sans Soleil (1982)
60=) La dolce vita (1960)
60=) Moonlight (2016)
60=) Daughters of the Dust (1991)
63=) GoodFellas (1990)
63=) The Third Man (1949)
63=) Casablanca (1942)
66) Touki Bouki (1973)
67=) Andrei Rublev (1966)
67=) La Jetée (1962)
67=) The Red Shoes (1948)
67=) The Gleaners and I (2000)
67=) Metropolis (1927)
72=) L’avventura (1960)
72=) Journey to Italy (1954)
72=) My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
75=) Spirited Away (2001)
75=) Imitation of Life (1959)
75=) Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
78=) Sunset Blvd. (1950)
78=) Sátántangó (1994)
78=) A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
78=) Modern Times (1936)
78=) A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
78=) Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
84=) Blue Velvet (1986)
84=) The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
84=) Pierrot le fou (1965)
84=) Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1998)
88=) The Shining (1980)
88=) Chungking Express (1994)
90=) Parasite (2019)
90=) Yi Yi (1999)
90=) Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
90=) The Leopard (1963)
90=) Madame de… (1953)
95=) A Man Escaped (1956)
95=) Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
95=) Tropical Malady (2004)
95=) Black Girl (1965)
95=) The General (1926)
95=) Get Out (2017)