2. Three Colors: Red
Not many directors ever go out on a high point. Billy Wilder's Buddy Buddy was a flat failure. Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut was fiercely divisive even for him. Sergio Leone was devastated at the studio treatment of Once Upon A Time in America and heartbroken, refused to work again. But with Krzysztof Kieslowski, his final film and the finale of his political trilogy, Three Colors: Red was arguably his finest achievement as a film director. The concept behind the trilogy is to make three films with each representing the political ideals in the French flag: blue is liberty, white is equality and red is fraternity. Kieslowski's film, like its prior instalments is an electrifying watch and thematically attempts to cover everything. A big part of the film is the intellectual struggle between moral behaviour and legal law and much of this is communicated through Jean-Louis Trintignant's retired judge. The direction is typically virtuoso as Kieslowski frames his pictures immaculately and always gets great performances from his actors. He even received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for his work on the film which is almost unheard of for a film not in English. It's a beautiful, impassioned film that is hard to fault and rounds off one of cinema's finest trilogies with assured genius.