These are ten of the most intriguing and original films I have seen since I started writing reviews in 2000. They aren't necessarily the best ones I've seen, although most of them are among the best. I'm not egotistical enough to say that you need to see these in order to be film-literate. I just value films that are inventive; this list is for people like me.

Band of Outsiders (1964-France)
Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Starring Anna Karina, Sami Frey, and Claude Brasseur

While most people say that Godard's Breathless is his masterpiece, I think that this, his sophomore effort, is more entertaining and watchable while still serving as a primer on French New Wave filmmaking techniques. This is the story of two thugs who browbeat a young woman into helping them rob her rich uncle. One of the things I like the most about it is that much of the film consists of what lesser directors would consider down time. One great scene takes place in a diner, where the three leads talk about life and the robbery, playing a hilarious game of musical chairs as each man attempts to sit next to the woman. One of the points of the French New Wave was to constantly remind the audience that they are watching a movie, not reality; Godard is the best at this, at one point remarking in a voiceover, "Like in most B-movies, they decided to wait for dark to come before entering the house." Godard dismantles the suspense genre and pokes fun at it, but at the same time makes a very good suspense film. As an interesting side note, Quentin Tarantino named his production company "A Band Apart" in honor of the French title of this film, Bande à parte.

Branded to Kill (1967-Japan)
Directed by Seijun Suzuki; written by Hachiro Guryu, Takeo Kimura, Chusei Sone, and Atsushi Yamatoya
Starring Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Mari Annu, Koji Nambara, and Isao Tamagawa

In 1966, Seijun Suzuki presented his producers with Tokyo Drifter, his psychedelic take on the Japanese gangster film. They said that if he ever made a movie like that again, they would fire him. In 1967, he gave them Branded to Kill, and they fired him. Star Joe Shishido (who looks like a hamster) is #3 killer for his yakuza gang. He is aroused by the scent of boiling rice, and his relationship with his wife consists of sex and attempted murder. He becomes involved with a mysterious witch-like woman, and he botches a murder because of his involvement with her. Now his life is forfeit, and he has to attempt to defeat #1 killer, whose identity is soon revealed when the man basically moves into Joe's house with him in a crazy take on the Japanese obsession with honor. The film is almost impossible to follow, but the kinetic pace and over-the-top direction and acting make it lots of fun. Especially great are scenes depicting Joe's hits, including one where he rides a hot-air balloon up the side of a building to get to his victim's window. Another scene, involving a hit performed through a sink drain, was "quoted" in Jim Jarmusch's ultra-cool Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

Cemetery Man (1994-Italy)
Directed by Michele Soavi; written by Gianni Romli, based on the graphic novel by Tiziano Sclavi
Starring Rupert Everett, Anna Falchi, and Francois Hadji-Lazaro

Martin Scorsese called this zombie comedy the best movie of 1994. In it, Rupert Everett plays Francisco Dellamorte, the caretaker at an Italian cemetery whose job is to kill the dead again when they rise a week after they die. His best friend is the pre-linguistic slob Gnaghi, played by French punk rocker Hadji-Lazaro, who manages to be lovable, sinister, tragic, and funny without words outside the occasional guttural grunt. Dellamorte meets and falls in love with a beautiful widow, played by model Anna Falchi, whose sexual predilections lead to her untimely death and resurrection as a zombie. He has to kill her, but their promise of undying love mocks him as she returns again and again, with the actress playing two more characters. Jaded Gen-Xers and the particular obsessions of the 1990s, including safe sex and annoying pseudo-intellectual indifference, are the targets for some wicked humor. The film is heavily influenced by such Italian masters of horror as Dario Argento, and like Argento, Souavi is a master at shot composition, even if you don't care for this particular blend of horror-comedy.

Gates of Heaven (1978)
Directed by Errol Morris

The first time I saw this documentary, which Roger Ebert listed as one of the ten best films of all time, I hated it so much that I turned it off 30 minutes in. When I saw it the second time, I saw it as a flawed but endlessly fascinating film about the meaning of life and death. It's the story of a pet cemetery in California that has to dig up its charges and move them to another site. It's also about the family that runs it, the life of the man who started it, and the families who entrust their beloved pets to the cemetery. It explores the basic reason why people own pets in the first place, and comes down to an answer given by Floyd, the guy who started the thing, who says that he can't turn his back on a human and trust that they won't do something to harm him because humans are capable of selfishness, but you can always trust your pet to be loyal. But it's about so much more than pet ownership, touching on marriage, the birth control pill, the duties of children to their parents, and what qualifies an organism for entry into heaven. It's difficult at first, because both the content and filmmaking style are so off-putting, but the last half rewards your patience.

Metropolis (2001-Japan)
Directed by Rin Taro; written by Katsuhiro Otomo, based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka

This is one of the best animated films I have ever seen. It is a brilliant blend of Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece and elements from Blade Runner and A.I. It's the story of a class war fought between displaced workers and the robots who have taken their jobs; the workers don't realize that it is the city fathers who have created the situation and should bear the consequences. It is the story of a city ruled by Duke Red, who has built a towering edifice with tremendous powers from which he plans to rule the world with the help of Tima, a creature who is part human and part robot who was created for him in the image of his dead daughter. Tima is lost in the bowels of the city before Duke Red can carry out his plan, and he attempts to find her before his adopted son Rock, who wants to destroy all robots, can find her first. She is aided by a young man, and the two fall in love. The filmmakers use Tima's story to deal with questions about what it means to be human, the possibility of artificial intelligence, and the role of technology in society. It's also visual marvel, a seamless blend of computer graphics and traditional cell animation that culminates in one of the most stunning sequences I have seen in a long time.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton; written by James Agee, based on the novel by David Grubb
Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelly Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin, and Sally Jane Bruce

In the only film that character actor Charles Laughton directed, he created a masterpiece of expressionistic storytelling. Because it wasn't filmed naturalistically, it holds up like many 1950s films do not, because it created a convincing other world almost entirely on studio sets, something like blending Flannery O'Connor's macabre American Gothic settings, film noir claustrophobia, and the Brothers Grimm (the only other movie that comes close in my mind to creating this kind of feeling is Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves). Robert Mitchum plays the unforgettable Reverend Harry Powell, a false prophet who marries women for their money and then kills them. He is one of the creepiest characters ever brought to the screen; watch the film and see if you can ever hear "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" without a shiver running down your back. The story involves Powell's seduction of the widow of an executed felon who hid $10,000 on his farm. His kids know where it is, but they instinctively distrust Powell because, well, he's a creepy SOB. Soon their mother is dead, and the kids flee down the river as he follows, seeming more unstoppable than a slasher film killer. The children end up in the care of Lilian Gish, who plays an elderly woman who takes in foundlings. She seems too weak to stop the monster Powell, but this is a film about the battle between good and evil, and her faith protects them. Laughton called it a "nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale." That about sums it up.

Rififi (1955-France)
Directed by Jules Dassin; written by Jules Dassin, Rene Wheeler, and August Le Breton
Starring Jean Servais, Carl Mohner, Robert Manuel, Jules Dassin, Marie Sabouret, and Marcel Lupovici

This is the best heist movies ever made, as well as being one of the finest examples of film noir. It is the story of Le Stephanois, an aging crook who pulls the ill-fated last heist before retiring. The film features the single best heist sequence in film history, a 30-minute robbery of a jewelry store that is completely without dialog; you are literally at the edge of your seat by the end of it. The film also works as a textbook example of what makes a noir: the femme fatale, the cruel hand of fate spoiling the "perfect crime," etc. It is also aware of the generic conventions of noir; one character is killed after spilling the gang's secrets to the bad guy because, as he admits, he broke "the rules." Director Dassin was a noted director of the early films noirs of the 1940s until he refused to name names for HUAC, and he returned to France to make one of the finest noirs; it is interesting that he chose to play Cesar, the thief names names to the enemy gangsters.

Sherlock Jr. (1923)
Directed by Buster Keaton; written by Jean Haves, Joe Mitchell, and Clyde Bruckman
Starring Buster Keaton, Catherine McGuire, Joe Keaton, and Erwin Connely

Anyone who thinks silent films are boring should see this, which is Keaton's best film in my opinion. He packs a lot of action into a brief 44 minutes. It has dazzling chase scenes, visual effects that are still surprisingly good eighty years later, and an early example of that trend in film that we can't seem to escape from: self-reflexivity. It's a film about a person who finds himself stuck in a film, and he uses his knowledge of cinematic themes and genres to work his way through this new world. There are at least four sequences in this film that I watched over and over, trying to figure out how they were done. For example, one involved Keaton diving through a window and coming out the other side dressed as a woman; in my favorite one, Keaton appears to dive through his partner's chest and disappear. You really have to see it to believe it. As far as masters of silent comedy (or cinema in general) go, Keaton is the best, surpassing Charlie Chaplin's more maudlin work. Through disaster after disaster, his characters soldier on, stone-faced, never, unlike Chaplin, stooping to tears to win sympathy.

Sonatine (1993-Japan)
Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano
Starring Takeshi Kitano, Aya Kokumai, Tetsu Watanabe, and Ren Osugi

This is a different kind of yakuza film; where other Asian gangster movies, like those of John Woo, are interested primarily in balletic gunfights, Kitano is more interested in the space between them, when hardened hit men have to spend time waiting and interacting with each other. Kitano (who acts, directs, writes, and edits) plays the leader of a Tokyo yakuza sect who are sent to Okinawa to mediate in a gang war; in reality, there is no war until he arrives, and his boss sent him away so he could steal his territory. After the gang arrives, a war breaks out, caused by his boss in an effort to do away with him. Kitano and his oddball assortment of punks and killers narrowly escape death and hide out in a beachfront house. This stunning and hilarious section of the film depicts them dealing with what is basically a waiting game: they play games and pull practical jokes as they await further orders. In these scenes, the film resembles a comedy more than anything. Kitano is one of the best directors working today, and his films are contemplative and beautiful; they take their time, and he likes to use infrequent cuts and beautiful long shots to emphasize his characters' isolation, even when they are together.

Stroszek (1977-Germany)
Written and directed by Werner Herzog
Starring Bruno S., Clemens Scheitz, Eva Mattes, and Clayton Szlapinski

There simply isn't another movie in the world quite like Stroszek. Part biography, both of its director and of its star; part bitter satire of the American dream, part loving tribute to America; part tragedy, part comedy; this film is an ungainly, lovable, heartbreaking mess of a movie that I think I could watch again and again. It is, in its own way, absolutely perfect. Bruno S. (his life is an interesting story as well) plays Bruno, a man who has spent most of his life in jail or various institutions. He befriends a prostitute and his eccentric elderly neighbor, and the trio flee to the rich land of the United States when life in Berlin gets too difficult. They end up in a Wisconsin backwater in dead-end jobs, they experience the joys of home ownership and the misery of debt, and in a final, hilarious rebellion against the unfairness of life, they go on a crime spree that ends with Bruno alone with a dancing chicken in the most indescribable Thanksgiving dinner in film history. The film uses non-actors to populate its Wisconsin town, including many people who Herzog met on a trip there; a highlight is an evasive double-talking bank employee attempting to tell Bruno that he might have to take the trailer back.