35 Best Films From Directors Over 60

Nearly a decade after the Hays Code, the time for glorified gangsters was over. However, before Hollywood shifted their gaze to the European-inspired, shadowy film noir, the gangster bid one last adieu in High Sierra. It was this very concept that was the foundation of the story– bringing back a robber for one more heist– but with an excellent Humphrey Bogart and John Huston’s riveting script, the film was something else. It pushed the gangster genre into a different place, as Bogart’s thief reveals a sensitivity that was then uncommon in the genre, and Huston takes advantage of the Code to build up suspense and sympathy as his farm boy-turned-mobster tries to climb his way to freedom. Being their breakthrough moment, it’s no wonder then that Bogart and Huston continued their partnership in brooding, anti-hero film noir dramas, but High Sierra still holds up to this day, cementing some of the tropes that future crime thrillers draw inspiration from.

You know how many films depict the magic and wonder of cinema in such gorgeous, magnificent scenes? Peeping Tom does the opposite. Sure, it has director Michael Powell’s signature flair, with excellently framed and colored shots, but he takes a much more violent route here, swapping spectacular fantasy with the psychological terror of how the act of filming and watching can be. Given the title, it won’t be a surprise that the film involves voyeurism, but rather than of the sexual kind, Powell hones into the morbidity of the camera gaze, the twisted pleasure that’s felt when the audience sees someone terrified, despite the violence done upon them. It’s because of this that the film was so controversial, but eventually, Peeping Tom garnered critical acclaim for breaking ground as the first slasher film ever made.

In his last film, American Serb film historian Peter Bogdanovich celebrates silver screen legend Buster Keaton. The subject alone is compelling to watch. It would be easy to pull clips from Keaton’s works, dig through the headlines, pull in some celebrity interviews, and call it a day. However, in Bogdanovich’s hands, this documentary handles Keaton with respect. Instead of focusing on the scandals, Bogdanovich focuses on Keaton’s brilliant work. Instead of reciting facts, Bogdanovich highlights how his bits influenced film today. Excellent editing – cuts, structure, and scoring – helps us glide through Keaton’s work. The film truly understands Keaton’s life and exactly why he’s brilliant. Comprehensive yet very focused, this documentary honestly feels better than film school.

The Last Duel propped high expectations as the Closing Film at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, but its theatrical release later that year proved to be a flop. Ridley Scott blamed it on millennials, but both critics and streaming audiences have been much more favorable than moviegoers. As a film, it’s a rather monumental project: quite a dark period piece set in Medieval France, dealing with harsh and offensive themes. Or better said, it deals with ethics and morality through these harsh and offensive themes. There are many ways where this could have gotten wrong—and it’s evident from the labels that have been circulating from the very beginning, that Scott has made his “MeToo” movie—but the truth is much more nuanced. From Eric Jager’s 2004 book to a script co-written by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and (most importantly) the astute Nicole Holofcener, The Last Duel is really the best of both worlds: action-packed and devoted to the right side of history.

For better or worse, there is a lot that has been decided about your life even before you were born– the circumstances of your childhood are a direct reflection of the choices your parents made, as well as their parents, and their parents before them. This idea made for an intriguing Portuguese novel, which was later adapted into the sprawling 272-minute Mysteries of Lisbon. Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz renders the plot into an intricate mystery, slowly and steadily unravelling its secrets in multiple layers, coincidences, and synchronities in love, war, trauma, and betrayal. The lengthy runtime might be daunting for some viewers, but once immersed, it’s so easy to be mesmerized by Ruiz’s stunning shots, the narratives shared by the characters, and the memories that they find themselves lost in. Mistérios de Lisboa was a daunting novel to adapt because of the multinarrative tale, but Ruiz translates the narrative into a surreal masterpiece to behold.