Jonathan Rosenbaum’s 1000 Essential Films: The Top 100

Here are Rosenbaum's 100 favorite films, in chronological order. For more details on his choices and personal commentary, see annotations.

Le Tunnel sous la Manche (Melies) 
Les Vampires (Feuillade) 
Tih Minh (Feuillade) 
Foolish Wives (Stroheim) 
Greed (Stroheim) 
Die Nibelungen (Lang) 
Sunrise (Murnau) 
The Docks of New York (Sternberg) 
Spione (Lang) 
Arsenal (Dovzhenko) 
Lonesome (Fejos) 
City Lights (Chaplin) 
M (Lang) 
La Nuit du Carrefour (Renoir) 
Ivan (Dovzhenko) 
I Was Born, but.. (Ozu) 
Love Me Tonight (Mamoulian) 
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (Milestone) 
Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor) 
Make way for Tomorrow (McCarey) 
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir) 
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi) 
Christmas in July (Sturges) 
Citizen Kane (Welles) 
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles) 
Day of Wrath (Dreyer) 
Heaven Can Wait (Lubitsch) 
The Seventh Victim (Robson) 
Ivan the Terrible 1+2 (Eisenstein) 
The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler) 
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin) 
Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu) 
Stars in my Crown (Tourneur) 
The Steel Helmet (Fuller) 
The Big Sky (Hawks) 
Othello (Welles) 
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks) 
The Naked Spur (Mann) 
The Sun Shines Bright (Ford) 
Johnny Guitar (N.Ray) 
Rear Window (Hitchcock) 
The Saga of Anatahan (Sternberg) 
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi) 
Track of the Cat (Wellman) 
Ordet (Dreyer) 
Guys and Dolls (Mankiewicz) 
The Killing (Kubrick) 
A Man Escaped (Bresson) 
India (Rossellini) 
Breathless (Godard) 
Hiroshima mon Amour (Resnais) 
Rio Bravo (Hawks) 
The Tiger of Eschnapur/The Indian Tomb (Lang) 
Cloud-Capped Star (Ghatak) 
Shadows (Cassavetes) 
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais) 
A Wife Confesses (Masumura) 
Eclipse (Antonioni) 
The House is Black (Farrokhzad) 
Gertrud (Dreyer) 
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson) 
Black Girl (Sembene) 
Playtime (Tati) 
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy) 
L'Amour Fou (Rivette) 
Out 1 (Rivette) 
La Région Centrale (Snow) 
Avanti (Wilder) 
Out 1:Spectre (Rivette) 
F for Fake (Welles) 
Parade (Tati) 
Celine and Julie go Boating (Rivette) 
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick) 
Providence (Resnais) 
Doomed Love (Oliveira) 
Perceval le Gallois (Rohmer) 
Stalker (Tarkovsky) 
Orderly or Disorderly (Kiarostami) 
Too Early, Too Late (Straub, Huillet) 
Love Streams (Cassavetes) 
Manuel on the Island of Wonders (Ruiz) 
Mix-Up (Romand) 
Mélo (Resnais) 
Where is the Friend's House? (Kiarostami) 
Yeelen (Cissé) 
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies) 
A Tale of the Wind (Ivens) 
The Asthenic Syndrome (Muratova) 
Close-up (Kiarostami) 
Nouvelle Vague (Godard) 
Actress (Kwan) 
A Brighter Summer Day (Yang) 
The Puppetmaster (Hou) 
Satantango (Tarr) 
Dead Man (Jarmusch) 
When it Rains (Burnett) 
Inquiétude (Oliveira) 
The Wind will Carry Us (Kiarostami) 
Platform (Jia Zhangke) 
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg)

Auteurs with multiple entires include: Feuillade, Stroheim, Lang (4), Sternberg, Chaplin, Renoir, Mizoguchi, Welles (4), Dreyer (3), Hawks (3), Kubrick, Bresson, Resnais (4), Cassavetes, Godard, Tati, Rivette (4), Oliveira, Kiarostami (3)

Thanks to John Davies for compiling this list from Rosenbaum's book.