"Fantasia" is a series of short films linked together by the framing story of an orchestra performing a concert (the conductor is Leopold Stokowski). The films within the film are hypothetical visions occurring in the mind's eye of the listener. But because the mind's eye in question belonged to Disney, the screen was filled with Disney imagery unmoored from a story -- an experimental film in kid-flick drag. It was all about how the music interacted with the images -- so precisely that it was as if the two art forms, instrumental performance and animation, were dancing together. The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The mushrooms. The centaurs. The dancing hippos. The volcanos. The dinosaurs. The demon. Parts of it are silly or cloying. Other parts are terrifying. And almost all of it is staggeringly beautiful. "Fantasia" was the first (and so far only) Walt Disney film to prompt viewers to ask, "What am I looking at?" and "What does it mean?" It's the Disney movie as powerful hallucinogen. For kids. ||||| The BFI's Sight & Sound magazine survey puts Hitchcock's psychological drama at the top of the charts in the once-a-decade international critics’ film poll, published since 1962. 
 
 LONDON – Orson Welles' Citizen Kane no longer enjoys the moniker of greatest film of all time, a plaudit it has held for 50 years. 
 
 The movie has occupied top billing in the British Film Institute-published magazine Sight & Sound's once-a-decade international critics’ film poll since 1962. 
 
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 But that crown, according to Sight & Sound's 2012 survey of 846 movie experts who participate, has now passed to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. 
 
 Made in 1958, the psychological suspense drama first entered the Sight & Sound poll in 1982 in seventh place -- two years after its director died. Largely ignored by the critics for most of his career, its rise in the poll is testament to how Hitchcock’s reputation has steadily increased over time. 
 
 Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo trumped Citizen Kane by 34 votes this time around; it finished second 10 years ago, five votes shy of Kane. 
 
 And 1941's Kane, second in the survey, also missed out on the top spot in a separate poll of 358 film directors from all over the world -- including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and Mike Leigh -- whose survey chose Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) as its greatest. 
 
 The critics poll, first conducted in 1952, marks the magazine's seventh and its most ambitious to date. 
 
 The 10-yearly survey aims to rule out fluctuations in taste and asks participants to interpret "greatest" in any way they choose. 
 
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 That could mean whether the film was most important to film history, represented the aesthetic pinnacle of achievement or perhaps had a personal impact on their own view of cinema. 
 
 This year’s poll sample of 846 film critics, academics, distributors, writers and programmers from all corners of the globe was the biggest ever. They voted for 2,045 movie titles overall. 
 
 That compares with the 144 who were asked 10 years ago. The pollsters said the huge increase "reflects the impact of the Internet and proliferation and increased influence of film commentators using this new medium." 
 
 Another fallout from this year's top 10 is Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 film that has appeared in the top 10 for all of the poll's 60 years in various slots. 
 
 Three silent films make 2012's top 10: Dziga Vertov’s documentary Man With a Movie Camera (1929) is a new addition, while 1927's Sunrise, directed by F.W. Murnau, moves up to fifth and 1927's The Passion of Joan of Arc re-enters – ousting Potemkin. 
 
 Organizers said the changes might be explained by the availability of the films on DVD and the resurgence in popularity in recent years for different kinds of live accompaniment to the films, from The Alloy Orchestra and Michael Nyman to prog rock. 
 
 Ozu’s Tokyo Story is in third spot and Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939) occupies fourth. 
 
 Vertov’s film is the first documentary to make the top 10 since 1952. 
 
 Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc is ninth , while the most recent film in the top 10 is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in sixth place. John Ford's The Searchers (1956) hits the seventh spot, while Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963) lies 10th. 
 
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 The Critics’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time 
 
 1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) 
 
 2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) 
 
 3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 
 
 4. La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) 
 
 5. Sunrise: A Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) 
 
 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) 
 
 7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956) 
 
 8. Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) 
 
 9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927) 
 
 10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963) 
 
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 The Directors’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time 
 
 1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 
 
 2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) 
 
 3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) 
 
 4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963) 
 
 5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980) 
 
 6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) 
 
 7. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) 
 
 8. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) 
 
 9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974) 
 
 10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) ||||| La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s much-anticipated follow-up to his stunning 2014 feature debut, Whiplash, illustrates the magic that can result when a director is fully committed to a vision. Chazelle doesn’t just want to tell a story (although he does). He doesn’t just want to enrapture an audience (which he also does). And he doesn’t want to rely on nostalgia to make his story work (although it plays a big part in the overall experience). La La Land isn’t just the best made-for-the-screen musical to reach theaters in a very long time, it’s arguably the best (non-animated) cinematic musical of any kind since 1986’s delightful Little Shop of Horrors. Yes, it’s more vibrant than Chicago, more heartfelt than Les Miserables, and more successfully staged than a chorus of other contenders. 
 
 To make La La Land, Chazelle has turned back the clock. The style, approach, camerawork, color palette, and viewpoint are all straight out of the 1950s. The lead actors, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, can frequently be caught channeling Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Ginger Rogers. Chazelle and his cinematographer, Linus Sandgren, love long takes and perhaps none is more ambitious than the opening one - a musical number on a jammed freeway, where drivers exit their cars and use singing and dancing as an antidote to road rage. The filmmakers’ love of the Golden Age Musicals emerges most forcefully in numbers like this but it permeates every frame of La La Land. With the exception of a few profane utterances (probably incorporated to avoid the worrisomely tame “PG” rating), there’s not an element in this film that couldn’t have been found in something made in 1952. The setting is modern day but the feel is old-fashioned (and that’s not in any way a bad thing). 
 
 Chazelle doesn’t only love classic musicals, he loves jazz. That much was clear from Whiplash but he makes doubly sure we know it here. The male main character is a frustrated jazz musician and a key aspect of the plot involves his passing on his love of music to his leading lady. Chazelle isn’t shy when it comes to exposing the viewer to all types of jazz - from the classic style that evocates the greats to the commercially viable modern variation used to attract a younger generation. John Legend comes along for the ride as a spokesperson for the latter. When it comes to addressing the tension between the two camps, Chazelle avoids condescension as Legend brutally lays out some hard truths about why “die hards” are killing jazz by holding tight to the great men of the past rather than innovating for the future. 
 
 La La Land is divided into five acts that follow the progression of the seasons - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. Although it starts out trading on our memories of old musicals, it eventually gains its own identity. Thematically, there’s nothing groundbreaking here. It’s a boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl-fall-in love, boy-loses-girl kind of story that reminds us that following a dream demands a price. La La Land is a fairy tale but it has a realistic edge. Instead of embracing the “happily ever after” ending in which all things are possible, La La Land uses a kind of inverted It’s a Wonderful Life to show how things might have been in another film. 
 
 Chazelle requires tremendous range from his leads. They have to sing (which they do well enough) and dance (which they do better than well enough). They have to be able to handle drama and comedy. And they have to strike sparks when they look into each other’s eyes, hold hands during a movie, or kiss. These are adept actors (both are past Oscar nominees) but in this tale, chemistry is as important as acting, and there’s no deficiency there. And, although there are times when Gosling and Stone’s singing is found wanting, they occasionally surprise. (After an uncertain start, Stone nails “Audition”.) Chazelle has opted not to go the Marnie Nixon route, allowing his actors to do their own vocal stunt work, favoring authenticity over polish. (This is one area in which his approach is decidedly unlike that of his 1950s predecessors.) 
 
 When we first encounter Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), they are trapped in the opening traffic jam, although neither participates in the song-and-dance block party. Their lives, like their cars, are crawling along. Their dreams seem far away, perhaps unattainable. Sebastian wants to open a jazz club but he’s trapped playing Christmas carols on a piano in a high-end restaurant for a grouchy J.K. Simmons. Mia is one of many - a wannabe actress who is forced to work as a barista to make ends meet while waiting for elusive audition calls and even more elusive call-backs. These two are getting nowhere fast until they meet. It takes three times before things click. As summer arrives, they’re in love but, as with the seasons, the height of warmth augurs the start of a predictable decline. 
 
 La La Land offers moments of unabashed euphoria but it’s never saccharine. That’s the key to its appeal - it allows us to dance with the characters but never feels manipulative. Its dramatic moments are more genuine than is often the case in musicals. Chazelle is as interested in developing a compelling, character-based romance as he is in selling soundtracks. And, although not all the songs are instantly memorable, at least two of them (Mia’s theme, “Audition”, and Sebastian’s theme, “City of Stars”) linger. They aren’t generic songs that get lost in a miasma of same-sounding tunes. There are five or six original compositions (music by Justin Hurwitz; lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), none of which fall into the “instantly forgotten” category. 
 
 It seems that every Oscar season offers viewers a new musical or two. Many of these are well-produced, masterfully choreographed, and impeccably staged. None of Hollywood’s recent offerings has lifted me up with the potency and grace of La La Land, one of the year’s most effervescent samples of pure entertainment. 
 
 La La Land (United States, 2016)
– If the goal of movies is to provide viewers with an escape from their everyday lives, then these movies offer that, with an extra hallucinogenic slap in the face. Salon set out to find the 10 Trippiest Movies Ever Made, and Matt Zoller Seitz's collection has everything from Disney to David Lynch to Porky Pig. Samples: Porky in Wackyland (1938): Here's one part: "In a field of towering mushrooms, Porky is menaced by a huge, fanged beast who suddenly starts traipsing about like a toddler, pealing, 'La la la! La la la!," writes Seitz. The Loony Tunes short is a true “mind-effer.” Fantasia (1940): Come on, dancing mushrooms? The psychedelic combo of instrumental music and choreographed animation—both dramatically horrifying and playfully silly—was probably pretty wicked for kids at the time. Yellow Submarine (1968): Another popular animation set to music, this movie follows the Fab Four on a journey to restore color to Pepperland…and that’s essentially all the plot you’ll find. The rest is stunning visual imagery to accompany Beatles’ classics like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Inland Empire (2006): This list wouldn’t truly be trippy without infamous surreal director David Lynch. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic, "a parable of evolution and the limits of imagination," plays with the mind’s concept of space, time, and human existence. After 43 years, it still lives up to its original promo, “The ultimate trip.” See the other trippy classics that made the list.