List: Top 5 Hollywood Classics I Still Haven't Seen

I thought it would be interesting to take a break from my lengthy reviews and post a list or two.
The idea for this one came to me almost instantly as I'm always feeling guilty about having not seen these films, but for some reason never watch them or even make any effort to get hold of them.
I don't know why this is, but I do know that I'll have to watch them sometime as they are all massively important films especially from a cultural point of view, they are classics in the truest sense of the word.

Classic Hollywood has never really been my cup of tea anyway, I much prefer the work of the Hollywood New Wave, or even the Pre-Code films. But I'm often left unimpressed by the so called classics of the 40's and 50's. Maybe that is why I have never made the effort to watch these films.
Anyway, enough rambling, here are my choices:

Top 5: Philip Seymour Hoffman Performances

Philip Seymour Hoffman is easily one of the best actors working today in Hollywood. He is effortlessly charismatic despite his features which are far from being typically "good looking".
He chooses excellent roles with few exceptions and even when in a sub par film he always stands out amongst the rest of the cast. His career has been a mix between small roles in large casts such as in the films of PT Anderson, artistic independent type films such as Synecdoche New York, Award winning films such as Capote and mainstream blockbuster successes such as Mission Impossible 3.

His career is a relatively short one, have lasted 20 years to date. He had his first on screen role in 1991, however he only rose to fame with his performances in Paul Thomas Anderson's films of the late 90's.

Top 5: Vincent Cassel Performances

I recently saw Notre Jour Viendra, which stars Vincent Cassel. He is one of my favourite actors so I expected a good performance, but I was impressed at just how great he was, this caused me to put together a short list of Cassel's Five Best Performances.

Cassel is definitely one of the best actors of his generation. He's been one of France's most acclaimed actors since his breakout performance in Kassowitz's La Haine, but he's only come to the American's attention recently, with Black Swan, his performance in that though was far from his best, in fact he was terribly miscast in a poor attempt to interest European viewers in my opinion.

But that aside, here are my five favourite performances of his:

A Few Underrated Directors

This is a short list of directors who I think are terrible overlooked and underrated, hopefully it will get any of you that read this interested in these directors.
I don't just mean they are overlooked by the general public, that goes without saying, but also by many film buffs.

So here we have it, Three Frenchmen, Two Britons and One American, all great directors, and all too overlooked:

Diva - 1980 with A List of the Best Directional Debuts

Diva - 1980 directed by Jean Jacques Beineix

I like this poster, simple at first but gets
more complex the more one looks at it.

No artistic movement can endure forever, this is a simple fact due to the ever evolving nature of all art forms.
Thus The French New Wave eventually had to come to an end. It was "replaced" by the new movement named "Cinema Du Look" of which Luc Besson is probably the most well known participant.
Jean Jacques Beineix can be credited with starting the movement with his first film "Diva".
It is a stylish and well acted Thriller but suffers from quite a few flaws. But first I'll mention the aspects I enjoyed, I thought the cinematography was quite exceptional it was very colourful and it's wide shots were superb, and the camera movements and angles were all very fluid and stylish, more so than many films nowadays I might add. So it definitely surpassed my expectations from a technical point of view. 
The acting as decent, it ranged from average to very good throughout quite a large cast. The acting wasn't a problem.

Red Cliff - 2008/2009 and a List of Historical Epics

 Trailer

I won't be writing a proper review for this film just a few thoughts on it as it completely blew me away!

Easily one of the best Historical Epics I've ever seen, 4 hours and a half in length, John Woo's masterpiece and the most expensive Asian funded film to date, 80 million dollars worth of budget and yet it grossed more than 120 million dollars worth in Asia alone, a commercial and critical success that outranks all those similar to it and marks the high point of John Woo's career, in my opinion: