Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)

"I now live in a cinephile world in which the 1998 version is the only version that people watch today and is considered a masterpiece of noir and one of the highest achievements in Orson Welles’s career, ranked alongside his first two films. And while some out there might say that their favorite Welles picture is one of his post-Hollywood works, to me Welles never made a more quintessentially American film than this one about the border between the United States and Mexico. It is legendary and at the same time a final eulogy for film noir, a sign of the changing times." ~ Jaime Grijalba

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

"My favorite piece on the film is Jonathan Lethem's essay 'Defending The Searchers,' where the author wrestles from a very personal perspective about the impact the film has had on him and his impulse to defend it against those who find it offensive or simply boring and dated, even as his own relationship to the movie changes and grows more complex over repeated viewings. It's a movie that has similarly nested in the minds of countless filmmakers who have clearly been inspired, for better or worse by Ford and John Wayne's depiction of a tortured, obsessed 'hero.'" ~ Andrew Bemis

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)

"There’s something about Pather Panchali that transcends Neo-Realism. Ray was a first-time director working with a first-time cinematographer and you can sometimes catch them groping their way through film grammar and arriving at their own imagining of what cinema is. That something is uniquely their own." ~ Christianne Benedict

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Duck Amuck (1953, Chuck Jones)

"By treating the very elements of moviemaking as a joke, Jones does what Orson Welles could do straight: make the viewer aware of the mechanics of his art in a way that makes creativity look like fun, the kind of fun that the viewer might want to get in on. Duck Amuck, like Citizen Kane, is the kind of movie that makes people want to make movies." ~ Phil Dyess-Nugent

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Singin' in the Rain (1952, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen)

"On the commentary track for A Clockwork Orange Malcolm McDowell explains that they chose to use the song 'Singin’ in the Rain' in Kubrick’s sadistic satire because they wanted to clearly express the sociopathic joy Alex felt and, 'Gene Kelly stomping on that street, in that water, rain coming down, the umbrella and dancing - that is euphoria! That is the happiest a human has ever been.' Of course he isn’t speaking about Gene Kelly, who was reportedly sick with an 103° temperature during the filming of the sequence. McDowell is speaking about Don Lockwood. Watching him so deeply in love that he jumps in puddles like a child and sings that he’s 'happy again,' makes audiences feel like we are truly watching the happiest human that has ever been,and that feeling is infectious." ~ Kevin Cecil

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)

"As self-aware and jaded as Sunset Boulevard is about the movie business, it's also a celebration of cinematic grandeur, both the operatic silent films that made Norma a star and the dialogue-driven contemporary films that Joe (and Wilder himself) carefully craft. Norma famously laments that in her era, the stars 'had faces,' and Swanson's face is easily the movie's top attraction, her expressive eyebrows doing more acting than some performers manage with their entire bodies." ~ Josh Bell

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Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

“Standing between the two halves [of the film] is the segment that assures the film’s standing as an all-time classic of the cinema, the 'Dance of The Red Shoes.' Being at once stylistically opposite to the rest of the film’s mostly down-to-earth dramatics and a reflection of what makes the rest of the film so great, the dance is truly enchanting, bringing ballet to life on the screen in way that emphasizes the artistic equality of the dance as it relates to the music, but does so on almost every cinematic level. From Jack Cardiff's stunning and perfectly lit Technicolor photography to the expressionistic set design and costuming, all levels of the film collaborate in the vivid act of storytelling that transcends language." ~ Patrick Miller

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