Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Beautiful, moving film.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Blistering performances.

While I can abide Cousins' anti-Hollywood viewpoint and I can abide the political slant to his series, I cannot abide his trumpeting of the film Hyenes directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, without even mentioning that it was based on a play by Swiss writer Frederich Durrenmatt. Not only that, but there was a previous film version, The Visit, directed by Bernhard Wicki in 1964, starring Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn. While Mambety created a brilliant film, he did not pull this film out of a vacuum by himself. It was an adaption and Cousins should have made us aware of this fact. It calls into question the veracity of the entire series, which I had enjoyed up until now. I'll need to watch the rest of the series with a far more critical eye.

I chose to watch the series because I know very little about film, and this seemed a good place to learn its history. I am finding it very educational. Some other commenter mentioned the many films he left out. I don't mind because I am familiar with most of the Hollywood classics. I am enjoying the more little known films and foreign films in this documentary that I never would have known about otherwise. But.....that accent. Holy moly. I can't bear to listen to him anymore. Another commenter said that he watched it with the captions turned on. I find that to be an excellent idea. I am going to try it because his accent makes me want to stick something sharp into my eyeball to distract me from the irritation. Dear Mark Cousins, should you ever decide to make another documentary, please hire a narrator. It's not your strong suit. Sincerely, One-eyed film reviewer

Note: This isn't really a review, more of a shout out to a series I would recommend to any film lover.This Documentary is the work of Irish film critic Mark Cousins, and is based on his extremely thorough 2004 novel "The Story of Film". Though it has only recently been released, it is a production that really deserve to be looked at as it examines some of the very best and more obscure choices of world cinema rarely mentioned in the history books (Most pointed out are wrote by rich white men and can be considered "racist by omission").There are obviously many Documentaries that exist on making a movie, but few tend to explore a series of movies and take an "essay" approach to dissection and interpretation. Jean-Luc Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinema", featured a short but diverse list that has interesting points to make, though it remains a somewhat small production I feel is limited in what it has and could say. "The Story of Film" spends its first few hours covering the origins of technique, the recurring images film makers pay homage to and the start of the Hollywood business. As the series progresses, we see how countless innovations have been tooled with across the world as Mark either narrates or comments over many relevant clips. The running commentary also offers a short and sweet sentence on the state of the world at the time, and any other interesting notes behind the camera.I can really only see this series becoming tedious if you have no desire to eventually see these movies. At the moment I can somewhat agree that the series falters somewhere in the middle, only because I've yet to really explore Indian and Iranian Cinema in depth. I have no idea how long this production took to make, but many people are interviewed including directors ranging from Stanley Donen to Lars Von Trier, and even seeing actress Kyoko Kagawa was very pleasant as I've been watching her movies only recently.Final Verdict: I suppose this series isn't for everyone, but for those who are really passionate about cinema will definitely learn a thing or two. In 2011 I was 19 the first time I saw it, and I found it to be this wonderful 15 hour film course. Now I'm 23, and having seen a larger majority of these movies I come back to this series yearly and would recommend it to just about everyone. It will possibly start a new trend of how film history is remembered, but for now it stands as the great reminder of what the medium can be, and just how it continues to grow with us emotionally as well as technologically. 10/10.

This documentary is a bold, encompassing lengthy journey into film history. By delving into movies he deems to be monumental and the particular scenes that make these movies monumental we are granted a very subjective interpretation of film history. It is not simply a history lesson in film. The chronological documentary is the creator's expression of how he views films and is therefore a work of art in and of itself. Wonderful to enter this man's portal into film since it exposes us to not only movies we never heard of but gives us an expert's view of what makes certain film's and scenes so important. It is innovation that is important and innovation which becomes influential. He sometimes emphasizes world cinema perhaps influencing the great American film makers. He'll choose to show a particular scene from a movie and go into the lighting, the camera strategies, the technology, the atmosphere created, the acting, the writing, the political and sociological situation of the moment when made....everything. He wonderfully makes it long so we can get deep into this. We might not agree on quite the level of importance he imparts on particular films but we can sense he is a passionate expert with a hyper-awareness. This creates a rich tapestry for us to soak in and will enrich our artistic souls and how we will forever see a movie in the future. By delving so deeply into film history it actually goes into a bit of world, cultural and politically history. It is a minor travelogue as well with some nice scenes of the foreign lands. The maker feels films reflected the time and place in which they were made. Sometimes as essences and shadows of the era and locale and other times rebelling against it. Film is both impacted by culture and politics and film can also even influence and change society. A lot of films that we love might shockingly only get mentioned for a mere minute. I felt that perhaps the Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia were more influential and deserved more time in this lengthy tapestry of film history. But every other documentary on film has berated us with how great these movies are. We already know it and can see documentaries just on the making and symbolism of these films or these great American filmmakers. The exposure to the rest of the world is one of the great achievements this documentary accomplishes. There are a billion people in India where the movie Shoaly played for 7 years. It had a profound impact on that country of a billion plus and I never heard of it until I saw this documentary. Perhaps Shoaly might be more influential to more people and the world than my favorite movies are. There are still whole episodes dedicated to films made in the United States. There is an episode that went into American movies from the 70s. There is a whole entire episode on Hollywood in the 1920s. Despite being a documentary about world cinema the US still is the largest country represented in the story of film. The most amazing part is his understanding of the artistic and political expressions emanating from particular scenes. Absorbing his critiques and commentary on film can gave not only a new way to look at film but a new way to look and think about many different art forms. Things that can do this are the greatest things ever created.