My ten favorite middlebrow films!

This was tough! Lots of second guessing. Can Mike Leigh and Ken Loach possibly be middlebrow? Powell/Pressburger? Michael Mann? John Boorman? I judged Suddenly, Last Summer and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman as finally too wacky to be included. I tried to avoid great directors thus leaving off Ford and Preminger. But I think I chose wisely with Minnelli and Hitchcock. I loved The Dresser (Peter Yates, 1983) as a kid but haven’t seen it since. My favorite Ingmar Bergmans tend to be his least middlebrow (The Silence, Persona, Hour of the Wolf). I’ve seen precious little Kurosawa. Etc.

1. The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)
2. Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)
3. The Holly and the Ivy (George More O’Ferrall, 1952)
4. Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)
5. Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis, 2000)
6. Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
7. Diabolique (aka Les diaboliques) (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955)
8. Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
9. Quills (Philip Kaufman, 2000)
10. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)