10. The Thin Red Line
Terrence Malick has had a turbulent relationship with the general public - more often than not the vast majority of people find his movies pretentious and boring, even if they will readily admit that they look absolutely fantastic. But if there's one thing that can be said about Malick it's that he's a director's director through and through, roundly admired by his peers. Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line is a far cry from the action-packed spectacle of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (released around the same time), focusing more on the existential musings of men at war and the metaphysical questions concerning fate and man's negative impact on the natural world. Not exactly the Normandy beach landings in terms of the thrills most audiences would expect. Reflecting on the "pure cinema" aspect of Malick's film, Nolan highlighted just how effectively The Thin Red Line functions beyond the conventions of narrative cinema: "It has a hypnotic quality where the viewer's relationship with the photography, and the sound particularly, creates narrative points; it creates emotions that drive the narrative. These things are created by the combination of picture and sound rather than the dialogue."