Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: Sherlock, Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)

"As you watch Keaton fool around with the moving image, both behind and in front of the camera, you realize that Sherlock, Jr. is one of the earliest examples of a filmmaker going meta and fully recognizing the joyful, limitless transcendence that comes from watching movies." ~ Craig Lindsey

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Buñuel)

"Second by second, frame by frame, it’s hard to imagine a movie more perfect than Un Chien Andalou, the 16-minute 1928 Surrealist collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. Not because it’s technically flawless (though the visual effects are pretty effective) or because it’s impeccably plotted. It’s not. But as one image flows into the next, the movie’s inexorable dream logic pulls you in. It’s an eye-opener in every sense." ~ Jim Emerson

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)

“For a movie made in a cinematic era in which a bed was no place for two members of the opposite sex to be seen together, The Lady Eve teems with barely bridled eroticism. On its own, the scene in which Jean first seduces Charles - her hands running through his hair, her gorgeous Edith Head ensemble slipping to reveal a bit of thigh - holds more of a charge than all the romcoms of Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl put together." ~ Melissa Starker

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

"Billy Wilder and his collaborators squeezed all the elements that tend to define noir into one deadly package, just as that genre was beginning to solidify. Yet I'd go one further than identifying Double Indemnity as a prime exemplar of noir style. I'd call it the single steamiest collision of eros and thanatos ever put to film. No other movie has made sex and death into such natural (and appealing) bedmates." ~ Andreas Stoehr

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)

"In its own absorbing, beautifully modulated way, Ozu's film acknowledges the horrors of the past and how they've been woven into the fabric of everyday life, somehow, miraculously, giving equal weight to both quiet despair and to hope, as well as for mourning on a grand and a very personal scale. In Tokyo Story, there's as much emotional impact in a lowering of a glance, or in the raising a cup of sake in the comfort of close, familiar quarters, as in the rampage of a radioactive sea monster." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: The Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

"It is an adventure film AND a character study AND epic AND intimate AND an essay on how to live a moral life in a way that makes the segregation of our current cinematic landscape look petty indeed. Like all great cinema, The Seven Samurai makes the boundaries between genre and art cinema melt away and look utterly arbitrary." ~ Bryce Wilson

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

“It's difficult to think of another director who only directed one film having as much influence on cinema as Charles Laughton, but then again Laughton always was a singular figure. The Night of the Hunter, his one and only effort behind the camera, went on to inspire generations of filmmakers." ~ Danny Bowes

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)

"My 16 year old self connected profoundly to Antoine’s sense of societal injustice and adult hypocrisy. When the final freeze frame/close-up/zoom in happened I literally gasped. It felt like looking in a mirror. I, along with most people my age, felt just as lost and confused as Antoine. I realize now how lucky I was to see this as an adolescent. Though my days of relating directly to the young Antoine are long gone, I can still appreciate The 400 Blows as a masterpiece of classic French cinema." ~ Kevin Cecil

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2014: 8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)

"Federico Fellini’s 8½ is one of those films that is so monumental and so influential that it’s hard to say anything new about it. Like Citizen Kane, it’s been so canonized that perhaps new viewers can’t help but be disappointed as they go in with the peak of expectations. For others, perhaps 8½ is like an ubiquitous classic rock song that they wish would go away to make room for others. Personally though, I find 8½ amazingly fresh each time I revisit it." ~ George Wu

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The Muriels Hall of Fame returns!

In case you've been wondering what Muriel's been up to since this year's awards, the answer is... quite a bit! Once again, we're proud to present the Muriels Hall of Fame, wherein our voters take time out of their summer vacations to honor some of the greatest films in cinematic history. This year's class is made up of nine films, and I believe they are all worthy of being ranked alongside last year's inaugural honorees:

Casablanca
Citizen Kane
La Jetee
Lawrence of Arabia
M
The Man With the Movie Camera
North by Northwest
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Psycho
Rear Window
Rules of the Game
Sansho the Bailiff
The Seventh Seal
Sunrise
The Third Man 
Vertigo
Yojimbo

So come back starting tomorrow evening to check out this year's inductees. Should be fun!