Anna from the blog Defiant Success takes a look at the top 10 Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards.

We asked. You voted! After all the talk about “Godfather part II” here, our second Reader’s Choice debate had to ask the question – which film is better: Godfather 1 or the much-loved sequel? After tallying up the votes cast in the comments section here, on Twitter through our Twitter page here, and on Facebook, the results are as follows…

The Greatest Comedy Tournament is entering its final stages over at AnomalousMaterial.com, if you have yet voted, head on over there for a look. Meanwhile, while you’re here – if you haven’t cast your vote in the Godfather 1 versus Godfather 2 debate you can do so right here! We’ve been busy posting many top 10 lists over the last few weeks, the most popular (and controversial) of which is Rodney Twelftree’s Top 10 Sequels of all time. We followed that up with the less controversial Part 3s that are better than Part 2s top 10. Rodney has also written an excellent top 10 list looking at the best Australian comedy films.

After all the talk about “Godfather part II” here, it seemed our next Reader’s Choice had to incorporate it somehow. Generally, Reader’s Choice will incorporate a wider body of work but to borrow from RossvRoss for one week we’ll pit “The Godfather” against its sequel. There aren’t many film couplets that have garnered as much praise as Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films. Part 2 is widely recognised as the greatest sequel of all time and it is easy to see why: it’s a truly brilliant tale of greed and familial power politics inherent in the Italian mafia. But it also looks at the continuing story with wider scope than the original, having two disconnected stories running parallel to each other. It is many people’s favoured film of the two, it garnered more award nominations than its predecessor, and, perhaps most importantly, features two fine performances from two of Hollywood’s greatest actors – Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

SAM MENDES’ TOP 10 FILMS
1. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
3. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
4. The Piano (Campion, 1993)
5. The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger, 1948)
6. Sunset Blvd (Wilder, 1950)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
8. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
9. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
10. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)

MILOS FORMAN’S TOP 10 FILMS

1. Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
2. American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973)
3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
5. The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978)
6. Les Enfants du Paradis (Carné, 1945)
7. Giant (Stevens, 1956)
8. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
9. Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951)
10. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)

The Independent newspaper in the UK asked several directors what their top 10 favourite movies were. The following are the films chosen by Sidney Lumet.

1. The Best Years Of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946) | Region 2 DVD: The Best Years Of Our Lives [DVD] [1946] | Region 1 DVD Best Years of Our Lives [DVD] [1946] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]
2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982) | Fanny And Alexander – Remastered [DVD] [1982]
3. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) | The Godfather Trilogy: Remastered Collection [DVD] [1972] | The Godfather Trilogy …