1. The Fall
How this film is not a classic, I still don't quite understand. Not only is it one of the most ravishingly gorgeous films ever made, it has a story and characters that aren't particularly lacking in any category. The Fall doesn't contain any profound insight into human behaviour or have any brilliantly witty dialogue but if you accept that cinema is an inherently visual medium, that is that images are by nature more important to a film than words, then The Fall is one of the most inherently cinematic of all films. The Fall is one of the ultimate labors of love in recent cinema, and it's a shame that it wasn't better received by either audiences or critics. Financed from Tarsem Singh's own assets and filmed over four years in twenty different countries, The Fall is one of the most unique movies you'll ever watch. Lee Pace plays a movie stuntman stuck in a hospital who regals a little girl with an epic tale that provides most of weight of the movie. He has an ulterior motive in telling the stories, which I won't spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it, but that doesn't stop them, as imagined by the little girl, from producing some of the most astonishing images ever put on film. Tarsem Singh insists that no CGI was used anywhere in the film and if that is indeed true, it is almost a miracle. The fall only picked up a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a fairly strong 7.8 on IMDB, with most of the criticism labeling the film as self-indulgent. If this film is self-indulgent though, I think cinema would be better off with more self-indulgent directors.