13. Citizen Kane

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, standing at the podium for a campaign rally in front of a giant poster of his own face.

Nobody could oversell this movie. There are plenty of reasons it stands the test of time and remains one of the greatest films ever made.

It’s overlapping narrative structure. The groundbreaking camerawork. The dialogue. It’s a work where everyone involved left nothing on the field.

It’s a story about the limits of power. Even a man with the ability to goad a nation to war or produce a media empire cannot convince people to love him. He moves fast and breaks things for his entire life, but in the end he’s left with nothing but broken pieces.

It’s A Christmas Carol without ghostly intervention.