offers a sympathetic and humane glimpse into inner-city life." Critics and scholars have likened the film to the work of Italian neorealist directors, particularly Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, for its documentary aesthetic and use of mostly non-professional, on-location actors. Burnett has also been compared to Yasujirō Ozu for his strong sense of composition, Stanley Kubrick for his sharp ear for juxtaposing popular music with images, John Cassavetes for his knack for coaxing natural performances from amateur actors, and Robert Altman for his interest in the minutiae of human interaction. Burnett's self-professed influences are Jean Renoir, Basil Wright, and Federico Fellini, all of whom exemplify the tender, humane and compassionate qualities for which Burnett has been praised, qualities intensely present in Killer of Sheep. Critic Andrew O'Hehir, noting the strong influences of Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, and Satyajit Ray, said, "It's hard to overemphasize how strange and ambitious and completely out of context it was for a black urban filmmaker with no money and no reputation to make that kind of movie in 1977." In 1990, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2008, Empire magazine ranked the film No. 398 of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The National Society of Film Critics chose Killer of Sheep as one of its 100 Essential Films. In 2015 the BBC named the film the 26th greatest American movie ever made. Lists The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007. 1st – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine 2nd – Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 3rd – Glenn Kenny, Premiere 3rd – Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun 3rd – Nick Schager, Slant Magazine 3rd – Richard Corliss, TIME magazine 5th – Dana Stevens, Slate 10th – Ella Taylor, LA Weekly Distribution Having previously only existed on worn 16mm prints, the film was restored and enlarged to 35mm by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Milestone Films, thanks in part to a donation from filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. The soundtrack, which had not been licensed, was also paid for at a cost of over US$150 000. On March 30, 2007, it opened in select theaters in the United States and Canada and on November 13, 2007, it was released on DVD as part of a deluxe box set with a director's