One of the Best

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 1999)

Ease the tension. Give it a 10-rating. I'm not sure if I could pick any movie and claim it was the Best Movie of All Time. That's a great deal of pressure. So I ignore such a label, and I watch the film.
"Citizen Kane" is powerful, but it's so well constructed as to give you multiple impressions of Kane that it's hard to realize how emotionally charged this movie is. I love it for lines such as Kane's explanation of what he would've been if he hadn't have been rich: "Everything you hate," he says. And I love the movie because of Welles's voice. You could look at this movie a hundred different ways, and the details would still remain to support you.
It's perhaps one of the most intricately-constructed films I've ever seen, and the honesty in the film is magnificent. This movie does make me sad, because among other questions, it asks this: "If you're remembered after you die for what you did, what you will it be?" And, to me, that's a very sad question to want to ask. A feeling that there is no absolute understanding between people. That it's all skewed by our own personalities. That who you are depends on the paper you chose to read.
How could anyone not think this movie is great? Best film of all time, whatever. The movie is brilliant, one way or another.