The Best Films by Year 1911 - 2011
Submitted by lbangs on Mon, 12/22/2003 - 12:52
Tags:
- 1911 - Little Nemo (McCay)
- 1912 - ?
- 1913 - Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (Sennett)
- 1914 - The New Janitor (Chaplin)
- 1915 - The Birth of a Nation (Griffith)
- 1916 - Intolerance (Griffith)
- 1917 - The Immigrant (Chaplin)
- 1918 - The Sinking of the Lusitania (McCay)
- 1919 - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
- 1920 - Der Golem (Wegener / Boese)
- 1921 - The Kid (Chaplin)
- 1922 - Nosferatu, The Vampire (Murnau)
- 1923 - Our Hospitality (Blystone / Keaton)
- 1924 - Greed (Von Stroheim)
- 1925 - Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein) [Variety (Dupont)]
- 1926 - Faust (Murnau)
- 1927 - Metropolis (Lang) [Napoleon (Gance)]
- 1928 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer) [Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel)]
- 1929 - Pandora's Box (Pabst)
- 1930 - The Blue Angel (von Sternberg)
- 1931 - M (Lang) [City Lights (Chaplin)]
- 1932 - Scarface (Hawks)
- 1933 - King Kong (Cooper / Schoedsack)
- 1934 - It Happened One Night (Capra)
- 1935 - The Informer (Ford) [The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)]
- 1936 - My Man Godfrey (La Cava)
- 1937 - Grand Illusion (Renoir) [Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (DIsney etc.)]
- 1938 - Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
- 1939 - Gunga Din (Stevens) [Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra)]
- 1940 - The Grapes of Wrath (Ford) [His Girl Friday (Hawks)]
- 1941 - Citizen Kane (Welles) [The Maltese Falcon (Huston)]
- 1942 - Casablanca (Curtiz) [The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)]
- 1943 - Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren)
- 1944 - Laura (Preminger) [Double Indemnity (Wilder)]
- 1945 - The Children of Paradise (Carne)
- 1946 - Notorious (Hitchcock) [The Big Sleep (Hawks)]
- 1947 - Out of the Past (Tourneur)
- 1948 - The Bicycle Thief (De Sica)
- 1949 - The Third Man (Reed) [A Letter to Three Wives (Mankiewicz)]
- 1950 - All About Eve (Mankiewicz) [Sunset Blvd. (Wilder)]
- 1951 - The Thing (Nyby) [Rashomon (Kurosawa)]
- 1952 - Singin' in the Rain (Donen / Kelly)
- 1953 - Tokyo Story (Ozu)
- 1954 - Rear Window (Hitchcock)
- 1955 - The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
- 1956 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel)
- 1957 - Throne of Blood (Kurosawa) [The Seventh Seal (Bergman)]
- 1958 - Touch of Evil (Welles)
- 1959 - North by Northwest (Hitchcock) [Some Like It Hot (Wilder)]
- 1960 - Breathless (Godard)
- 1961 - The Hustler (Rossen)
- 1962 - Lawrence of Arabia (Lean) [Jules and Jim (Truffaut)]
- 1963 - 8 1/2 (Fellini)
- 1964 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy)
- 1965 - Repulsion (Polanski)
- 1966 - Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) [Persona (Bergman)]
- 1967 - Belle de Jour (Bunuel)
- 1968 - Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone) [2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)]
- 1969 - The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
- 1970 - The Garden of the Finzi Continis (De Sica)
- 1971 - Harold and Maude (Ashby)
- 1972 - Cabaret (Fosse)
- 1973 - The Exorciest (Friedkin) [A Touch of Class (Frank)]
- 1974 - Chinatown (Polanski) [The Godfather Part II (Coppola)]
- 1975 - Nashville (Altman)
- 1976 - Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
- 1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
- 1978 - Halloween (Carpenter)
- 1979 - Manhattan (Allen) [Alien (Scott)]
- 1980 - Raging Bull (Scorsese) [Dressed to Kill (De Palma)]
- 1981 - Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg)
- 1982 - Blade Runner (Scott) [Tootsie (Pollack)]
- 1983 - The King of Comedy (Scorsese)
- 1984 - Once Upon a Time in America (Leone) [Blood Simple (Coen)]
- 1985 - Ran (Kurosawa)
- 1986 - Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen)
- 1987 - Broadcast News (Brooks) [Wings of Desire (Wenders)]
- 1988 - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kaufman)
- 1989 - sex, lies, and videotape (Soderbergh) [When Harry Met Sally (Reiner)]
- 1990 - Miller's Crossing (Coen) [Ju Dou (Yimou)]
- 1991 - Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale / Wise)
- 1992 - Simple Men (Hartley)
- 1993 - The Piano (Campion) [Short Cuts (Altman)]
- 1994 - Amateur (Hartley) [Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)]
- 1995 - Before Sunrise (Linklater)
- 1996 - The English Patient (Minghella)
- 1997 - Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
- 1998 - Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Ritchie)
- 1999 - Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
- 2000 - Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky)
- 2001 - Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
- 2002 - The Twilight Samurai (Yoji)[Bloody Sunday (Greengrass)]
- 2003 - Mystic River (Eastwood) [Lost in Translation (Coppola)]
- 2004 - 2046 (Wong) [Before Sunset (Linklater)]
- 2005 - The New World (Malick) [King Kong (Jackson)]
- 2006 - Children of Men (Cuarón) [The Departed (Scorsese)]
- 2007 - Into the Wild (Penn) [There Will Be Blood (Anderson)]
- 2008 - Frozen River (Hunt) [The Wrestler (Aronofsky)]
- 2009 - The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella) [Up in the Air (Reitman)]
- 2010 - The God of Love (Matheny) [Biutiful (Iñárritu)]
- 2011 - The Tree of Life (Malick) [Beginners (Mills)]
Author Comments:
OK, I finally coughed this one up, encouraged by both AJ's and AAA's lists. A few years are tough, and I naturally reserve the right to change my mind later...
I've put a few runners-up for the extremely close years next to the winner.
Cloned From:
I accidentally stuck my comments into the teaser box. Jim, is there any way you can 'un-tease' my comments?
Sorry...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Done! (although it seemed like a perfectly acceptable teaser to me)
Thanks!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
YAY Requim For A Dream. A Brilliant Movie.
Agreed. The director's Pi was also a close contender for its year.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Most interesting. I compared three lists (mine, AAA's, and AJ's), and here are the only unquestioned winners between the three:
1942 - Casablanca (Curtiz)
1949 - The Third Man (Reed)
1952 - Singin' in the Rain (Donen / Kelly)
1971 - Harold and Maude (Ashby)
1974 - Chinatown (Polanski)
1999 - Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Some very nice choices here. I particularly liked seeing Blade Runner, Before Sunset, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Talk To Her, and Mulholland Drive.
What is it about Mystic River that you liked? Was it the surprise ending or are you just a big fan of Sean Penn? Personally, I liked it, but I thought it was over-hyped.
Honestly, I just found Mystic River an excellent meditation on guilt and loss. The ending didn't really surprise me much, and though I do love Penn, that certainly would not be enough to carry the film for me.
The key scene for me is the one where Penn and Robbins both sit out on the porch, both guardedly sharing their grief.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs