Hey, we’re filmmakers! Of course we have recommendations, both good and bad. If you’re interested in film making, you should more than know the following, you should be able to run these films in your head. Here goes:

Citizen Kane - Yeah, how predictable, eh? But there’s no way to get around this film, a movie that has been considered the finest ever made since about 1954. Look at it from our point of view: here is a film made by a 25-year-old that had NEVER held a movie camera before. Does that suck, or what? How depressing… OK, not really since the film is a joy. The last thing you need to do is study this film. Just watch it, and then watch it again. Film critic Roger Ebert said that he has seen Citizen Kane about 400 times, and the last two times he watched it he saw things in frame he had never seen before. Cool! Anyway, don’t get us started on Orson Welles. “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “A Touch of Evil,” “Macbeth,” “Othello,” “The Chimes at Midnight.” He is the only filmmaker the International Society of Film Critics has said has made five masterpieces. We like to think of him in his later years, when he lived off inspiration and tenacity.

The General – Buster Keaton’s masterpiece (“Sherlock Jr.” was good but not great). A silent film of near ecstatic joy, still funny, sometimes side-splittingly so, more than 80 years later. Watch it to learn about camera placement. In those days, what you saw on screen is what you got. Filmmaking at its purest. Charlie Chaplin made more money, but Keaton was the genius.

Umberto D – Vittorio de Sica’s heart-crusher. de Sica’s “The Bicycle Thieves” is rightly declared, with Umberto D, a masterpiece, but it is “Umberto ” that somehow manages to express a consistency of experience to every single viewer. The end is the most powerful heartbreaker in cinema history. If this doesn’t teach you how to build tension, nothing will.

The Conversation – Francis Ford Coppola’s lesson in how to put dialog on film. Better than “The Godfather.” (Did we say that? Yes, we did.)

Fail Safe - How do you end a film that simply cannot be ended? Oh…that’s how.

And a few to avoid:

Tony Scott – Here’s a classic case of genes and where they ego. Brother Ridley (“Blade Runner”) got the filmmaking genes, Tony got the homemaking genes. There’s no other explanation for a director that must use a kitchen blender to edit his films. Chopped up noisy garbage. Just about anything by Tony is celuloid nonsense. He’ll teach you how to fuck up faster than any filmmaker we know of.

Uwe Boll – You know how Ed Wood made such appallingly bad films (“Plan 9 from Outer Space”) that they were incredibly funny and worth watching? Boll just makes appallingly bad films and stops there.

Nicolle Kidman - The worst actor in film history? You decide! We already have.

Martin Scorcese – Yeah we know. Look, his early films are great (“Raging Bull”) but the last ten years or more he’s made mostly boring tripe. Someone needs to show him where the cutting room is, and tell him that films don’t need to be nearly three hours long (and seem five) to make a point.

Write us! We’d love to hear your opinion, even if it’s wrong! (Just kidding….maybe.)