Again, absolutely no objective truth as to what can be "considered" a plain masterpiece over a personal favourite. Mine are one and the same. The following is a list of all the films I rate with four stars. That is, a list of outstanding works which have changed my life, or are changing my life.

À bout de souffle / Breathless (1959)
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes / Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)
American Beauty (1999)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Conversation, The (1974)
Don't Look Now (1973)
Eraserhead (1976)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
French Connection, The (1971)
Krótki film o milosc / A Short Film About Love (1988)
Lost Highway (1997)
Lost In Translation (2003)
Manhattan (1979)
Samouraï, Le / The Samurai (1967)
Stalker (1979)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Week-end / Weekend (1967)

Everything, in how we judge a film, is shaped by our desires and our memory, whatever they may be. And I think many underestimate the power of the unconscious connection which memory fulfills.

Some think there's a kind of objectivity which can be placed on it (perhaps there is, though nobody's convinced me yet), whereby you can get this and that out of a film. "Look at the cinematography, and the direction", etc. But even on an individual level, the way we see subjectively rate whatever element of Cinema it is, is going to be influenced by our memory, by the abstract, unconscious levels of connection.

If SC, for instance, considers King Kong the best film ever made because of personal connection to it, because of the emotions it conjures up in him every time he watches it, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I'd encourage more criticism like it.

The most ridiculous paradox ever was something I read along the lines of, "It never hit me emotionally, but I thought the cinematography was amazing." Amazing? In order to think that, it must have connected some way on an emotional level, no?

Just because it can't be voiced in words, doesn't mean it doesn't exist:

"Cinema has a language of its own, and it's a damned shamed to have to translate that back into words." - David Lynch