When the Motion Picture Academy looked at 1949, it gave its Best Picture award to All the King's Men, a thinly veiled account of the career of Huey Long. It's one of those "serious" Hollywood movies that can't live up to their pretentions, but I couldn't help enjoying it—Long is pretty much the most interesting political figure in American history, and it's fascinating to watch Hollywood react to him when he was still a relatively fresh memory. But enjoying a movie is one thing; putting it on a year's-best list is another.
1. The Third Man
Directed by Carol Reed
Written by Graham Greene
"Death's at the bottom of everything, Martins. Leave death to the professionals."
2. Stray Dog
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima
Not just a riveting noir, but a meditation on how much responsibility the ordinary Japanese citizen bears for the crimes of the militarist government. It has (cough) relevance beyond Japan.
3. White Heat
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, from a story by Virginia Kellogg
I never understood the Cagney cult until I saw this movie.
4. Little Rural Riding Hood
Directed by Tex Avery
Written by Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff
The high point of Avery's Riding Hood cycle.
5. Kind Hearts and Coronets
Directed by Robert Hamer
Written by Hamer and John Dighton, from a novel by Roy Horniman
A dark comedy from Ealing Studios, which specialized in this sort of small, understatedly funny film. It was a good year for Ealing: The company also made Passport to Pimlico, which you'll find elsewhere on this list, and Whisky Galore!, which isn't on the list but just barely missed it.
6. Passport to Pimlico
Directed by Henry Cornelius
Written by T.E.B. Clarke
The most Chestertonian comedy I've ever seen. "We've always been English and we'll always be English; and it's precisely because we are English that we're sticking up for our right to be Burgundians."
7. Thieves' Highway
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by A.I. Bezzerides, from his novel
Truck-driving noir.
8. The Reckless Moment
Directed by Max Ophüls
Written by Mel Dinelli, Robert E. Kent, Henry Garson, and Robert Soderberg, from a story by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
"You're quite a prisoner, aren't you?"
9. Jour de Fête
Directed by Jacques Tati
Written by Tati, Henri Marquet, and René Wheeler
The slapstick ballet of a rural postman.
10. The Set-Up
Directed by Robert Wise
Written by Art Cohn, from a poem by Joseph Moncure March
"I remember the first time you told me that. You were just one punch away from the title shot then. Don't you see, Bill? You'll always be just one punch away."
Honorable mentions:
11. Bad Luck Blackie (Tex Avery)
12. Long-Haired Hare (Chuck Jones)
13. I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks)
14. Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju)
15. Señor Droopy (Tex Avery)
16. D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté)
17. Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King)
18. The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson)
19. Flamingo Road (Michael Curtiz)
20. The Heiress (William Wyler)
Of the films of 1949 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Silence of the Sea.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1959, it gave its Best Picture award to Ben-Hur. Chariot race aside, I find that one pretty dull; if you find yourself watching it and have trouble staying awake, you can amuse yourself by searching for signs of the gay subtext that Gore Vidal claims to have inserted into the script.
1. The Four Hundred Blows
Directed by François Truffaut
Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
"To escape is bad enough, but getting caught is worse."
2. North by Northwest
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Ernest Lehman
Hitchcock's most paranoid picture.
3. Some Like it Hot
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, from a story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan
Of the other male stars of the period, only Bugs Bunny was this comfortable wearing women's clothes on camera.
4. Rio Bravo
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, from a story by B.H. McCampbell
You know a director is in control of his material when he can stick a Ricky Nelson/Dean Martin duet in the middle of an action-packed picture and make it feel like the most natural thing in the world.
5. Warlock
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Written by Robert Alan Aurthur, from a novel by Oakley Hall
A cowboy movie that doubles as a bleak political fable.
6. Nazarin
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel, Julio Alejandro, and Emilio Carballido, from a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós
Buñuel had a knack for turning liturgical drama on its head.
7. Ride Lonesome
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Written by Burt Kennedy
It didn't hit me until I started compiling these lists that Rio Bravo, Warlock, and this all came out the same year. We just might have stumbled onto a golden age of the Hollywood western.
8. Jazz on a Summer's Day
Directed by Bert Stern and Aram Avakian
Written by Albert D'Annibale and Arnold Perl
The best jazz documentary this side of Straight, No Chaser and the best concert film this side of Gimme Shelter.
9. The World of Apu
Directed by Satyajit Ray
Written by Ray, from a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
The endpoint and high point of the Apu trilogy.
10. Anatomy of a Murder
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Wendell Mayes, from a novel by John D. Voelker
"Just answer the questions, Mr. Paquette. The attorneys will provide the wisecracks."
Honorable mentions:
11. I'm All Right Jack (John Boulting)
12. A Bucket of Blood (Roger Corman)
13. Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa)
14. Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise)
15. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Jiří Trnka)
16. Science Friction (Stan van der Beek)
17. Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu)
18. Shadows (John Cassavetes)
19. Cat's Cradle (Stan Brakhage)
20. Suddenly, Last Summer (Joseph L. Manckiewicz)
Finally, let's give a shoutout to one of the giddiest, most delightful, most transcendent movie moments of all time: Criswell's introduction to Plan 9 from Outer Space. I unreservedly, unironically love that scene; to reject it is to reject the cinema itself.
Of the films of 1959 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Overcoat and The Great War.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1969, it gave its Best Picture award to Midnight Cowboy. They should've given that a pair of Best Actor statuettes and reserved Best Picture for one of these:
1. The Wild Bunch
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Peckinpah and Walon Green, from a story by Green and Roy Sickner
The best American western of the '60s.
2. The Passion of Anna
Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman
"Has it ever occurred to you that the worse off people are, the less they complain? Finally, they're silent even if they're living creatures with nerves, eyes, and hands. Vast armies of victims and hangmen. The sun rises and falls, heavily."
3. Goyokin
Directed by Hideo Gosha
Written by Gosha and Kei Tasaka
The ronin vs. the state.
4. The Milky Way
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière
The Contra Haereses of road movies.
5. Take the Money and Run
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Mickey Rose
"I think that if he'd been a successful criminal, he would have felt better. You know, he never made the '10 most wanted' list. It's very unfair voting—it's who you know."
6. Army of Shadows
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by Melville, from a novel by Joseph Kessel
When it comes to films about the French resistance, this is Casablanca's cheerless cousin. There's no shortage of nobility here, but there is far more ruthlessness than romance.
7. The Sorrow and the Pity
Directed by Marcel Ophüls
Written by Ophüls and André Harris
Another film about the resistance. This one makes Army of Shadows look starry-eyed.
8. The Rain People
Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Of Mice and Men on mescaline.
9. Burn!
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Written by Franco Solinas and Giorgio Arlorio
Start with the storyline of a Zapata western, but move it from Mexico to the Caribbean. Remix your history, so William Walker is transformed from a Tennessee filibuster to a British covert agent. Marinate those ingredients in anti-imperial New Left politics, then season with one of Morricone's best scores. Serve with Molotov cocktails.
10. Z
Directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras
Written by Costa-Gavras and Jorge Semprún
This one has that '60s revolutionary spirit too, plus a conspiratorial ambiance that we're more likely these days to associate with the '70s.
Honorable mentions:
11. La Femme Infidèle (Claude Chabrol)
12. Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie)
13. My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer)
14. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
15. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
16. The Sun's Gonna Shine (Les Blank, Skip Gerson)
17. Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin)
18. The Adding Machine (Jerome Epstein)
19. Invocation of My Demon Brother (Kenneth Anger)
20. Bambi Meets Godzilla (Marv Newland)
Of the films of 1969 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Swimming Pool and Blaumilch Canal.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1979, it gave its Best Picture award to Kramer vs. Kramer. That isn't a bad movie, but it's a tad too earnest for me. I prefer these:
1. Being There
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Jerzy Kosinski and Robert C. Jones, from a novel by Kosinski
Hal Ashby may be the most undersung American filmmaker of the 1970s, and this satire is his crowning achievement. After that the hammer came down, the New Hollywood era ended, and he spent the last few years of his life snorting cocaine and directing crap like Let's Spend the Night Together and 8 million ways to die. RIP.
2. Life of Brian
Directed by Terry Jones
Written by Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin
BRIAN: "You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!"
CROWD: "Yes, we're all individuals!"
3. Manhattan
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman
Orson Welles once called Woody Allen "a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic." In this case, I gather it worked better as comedy than as therapy.
4. Apocalypse Now
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Coppola, John Miluis, and Michael Herr, from a novel by Joseph Conrad
When the New Hollywood died, Coppola did a better job of surviving than Ashby did. But as with Being There, there's a bright line that separates the movies he made up through this one from all the pictures that came afterward.
5. Wise Blood
Directed by John Huston
Written by Benedict and Michael Fitzgerald, from a novel by Flannery O'Connor
The book is too good for any adaptation to equal it, but this one comes closer than anyone had a right to expect.
6. The Third Generation
Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Experiments with overlapping sound, a large cast with no clear protagonist, withering satire that doesn't spare anyone—if Robert Altman made a movie about German terrorists, it would look like this.
7. Winter Kills
Directed by William Richert
Written by Richert, from a novel by Richard Condon
It's like JFK, but with a sense of humor.
8. Escape from Alcatraz
Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Richard Tuggle
Clint Eastwood as Number Six, Patrick McGoohan as Number Two.
9. Murder by Decree
Directed by Bob Clark
Written by John Hopkins
The Sherlock Holmes mystery as '70s conspiracy thriller.
10. All That Jazz
Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Fosse and Robert Alan Aurthur
I've seen artists attack themselves before (cf. Manhattan, above), but I had no idea a musical could be so self-lacerating.
Honorable mentions:
11. The Great Santini (Lewis John Carlino)
12. Me Vang Nha (Nguyen Khanh Du)
13. Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog)
14. The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff)
15. Alien (Ridley Scott)
16. The Brood (David Cronenberg)
17. The Muppet Movie (James Frawley)
18. Scum (Alan Clarke)
19. A Perfect Couple (Robert Altman)
20. The Castle of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Of the films of 1979 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Zombi 2 and Mr. Mike's Mondo Video.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1989, it gave its Best Picture award to Driving Miss Daisy. I'm with Spike Lee on this one. You won't see that patronizing picture on my list:
1. The Decalogue
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Written by Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz
The 10 episodes of this Polish miniseries were ostensibly inspired by the 10 commandments, though I've never seen a compelling attempt to match Kieslowski's individual stories to Yahweh's individual instructions. But don't get hung up on the concept. Take each entry on its own terms, and you'll see some of the most morally nuanced storytelling ever made for the screen.
2. Drugstore Cowboy
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Van Sant and Daniel Yost with William S. Burroughs, from a novel by James Fogle
An old junky priest prophecizes in that gravelly Bill Burroughs voice: "In the near future, right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus."
3. Motel
Directed by Christian Blackwood
This obscure little movie about three American motels is one of the greatest documentaries I've ever seen.
4. Santa Sangre
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Written by Jodorowsky, Roberto Leoni, and Claudio Argento
I've never joined the cult around Jodorowsky's most famous feature, El Topo, but I love this wild and disturbing phantasmagoria that he made 19 years later.
5. Do the Right Thing
Written and directed by Spike Lee
Back in the day, there was a debate over which was the better movie about race relations, Do the Right Thing or Driving Miss Daisy. Is anyone still willing to take Daisy's side of the argument? Spike Lee's angry yet ambiguous film was the sort of thoughtful picture that people like Stanley Kramer wanted to make back in the '50s and '60s but didn't have the talent to pull off.
6. Monsieur Hire
Directed by Patrice Leconte
Written by Leconte and Patrick Dewolf, from a novel by Georges Simenon
A crime film, but its mysteries are more about its characters than the murder in their midst.
7. Life and Nothing But
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
Written by Tavernier and Jean Cosmos
Some of the best war movies take place after the shooting has stopped.
8. Kiki's Delivery Service
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Miyazaki, from a novel by Eiko Kadono
"You'd think they'd never seen a girl and a cat on a broom before."
9. Near Death
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
"Having built this thing, I have serious questions as to its utility."
10. Crimes and Misdemeanors
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Alan Alda proves the Fred MacMurray rule: It's more fun to watch a man play a villain when you've spent your life thinking of him as a goody-two-shoes.
Honorable mentions:
11. Say Anything... (Cameron Crowe)
12. Creature Comforts (Nick Park)
13. Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch)
14. Isle of Flowers (Jorge Furtado)
15. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)
16. Jesus of Montreal (Denys Arcand)
17. Ilé Aiyé (David Byrne)
18. Kitchen Sink (Alison Maclean)
19. Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismäki)
20. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (Alan Wareing)
Of the films of 1989 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Meet the Feebles and The Architecture of Doom.
THE NEW ANNUS MIRABILIS: On Thursday I listed my favorite films of 2009. Now we'll go back another decade, to a year with a well-deserved reputation as one of the best in Hollywood history. (Later in this series, we'll cover a year with an undeserved reputation as one of the best in Hollywood history. And also a year that should have a reputation as one of the best in Hollywood history yet somehow doesn't. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1999, it gave its Best Picture award to American Beauty, an ungainly mixture of smart, closely observed human comedy and dumb, ham-fisted social commentary. The first time I saw it, I zeroed in on the good stuff; if I hadn't watched the movie a second time, it might have found a spot on this list. But with viewing #2 I had to admit the film's critics were more right than I'd initially acknowledged. It didn't make the cut.
1. Election
Directed by Alexander Payne
Written by Payne and Jim Taylor, from a novel by Tom Perrotta
A year later, this one came true.
2. The Limey
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Lem Dobbs
A tough crime story with a raw sense of loss at its core.
3. Being John Malkovich
Directed by Spike Jonze
Written by Charlie Kaufman
A century from now, viewers won't quite get just how brilliantly absurd this setup is. Fortunately, that's not the only thing about it that's great.
4. Mr. Death
Directed by Errol Morris
Along with its other virtues, this documentary should inoculate any sensible viewer against taking David Irving seriously.
5. Toy Story 2
Directed by John Lasseter with Lee Unkrich and Ash Brannon
Written by Andrew Stanton, Rita Hsiao, Doug Chamberlain, and Chris Webb, from a story by Lasseter, Brannon, Stanton, and Pete Docter
"And this is the Buzz Lightyear aisle. Back in 1995, short-sighted retailers did not order enough dolls to meet demand."
6. Belfast, Maine
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
An engrossing, almost hypnotic portrait of a little New England town, told at a slow but never plodding rhythm.
7. Magnolia
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Like Robert Altman crossed with Charles Fort.
8. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Directed by Trey Parker
Written by Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady
"I'm sorry, I can't help myself. That movie has warped my fragile little mind."
9. Fight Club
Directed by David Fincher
Written by Jim Uhls, from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk
You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals the real wizard? This story makes a point of doing that to everything and everybody—including, by the end, to the smug smartass who keeps pulling back those curtains.
10. Limbo
Written and directed by John Sayles
This is the only one of Sayles' portrait-of-a-place movies that I like. That's largely because it's the only one with three-dimensional, unpredictable characters, as opposed to gamepieces in a tedious didactic scheme. The characters are so unpredictable, in fact, that midway through the story they push the picture into a different genre altogether and it stops being a portrait-of-a-place movie at all.
Honorable mentions:
11. Three Kings (David O. Russell)
12. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
13. Felicia's Journey (Atom Egoyan)
14. The Sopranos (David Chase)
15. Ghost Dog (Jim Jarmusch)
16. Time Regained (Raúl Ruiz)
17. Oz 3 (Tom Fontana)
18. The Matrix (Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski)
19. Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce)
20. Titus (Julie Taymor)
Just in case it isn't clear: The Sopranos refers to the first season of the TV series The Sopranos, and Oz 3 refers to the third season of Oz. Chase and Fontana are listed in their capacity as showrunners, not directors. I am not completely consistent in how I deal with TV shows, but by this point in cinematic history it feels a little ridiculous to ignore the strides that were happening in television. If I extended this list to 30 slots—and in a year as good as 1999, that would be doable—the third season of Buffy the Vampie Slayer would be somewhere in the vicinity of #22.
Of the films of 1999 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Wind Will Carry Us.
1. Up
Directed by Pete Docter
Written by Docter and Bob Peterson, from a story by Docter, Pererson, and Tom McCarthy
I'm not sure what happened at Pixar that led it to make a movie that is obviously for adults, half of whom will be bawling in the first 10 minutes, but it's the studio's best picture and I'm glad that it somehow came to be.
2. Inglourious Basterds
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino once said he'd like to make films that deal with the atrocities of the past—in this instance, the Holocaust—"like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films." What he didn't say was that the first genre picture he'd make along those lines would ask the sorts of open-ended moral questions that the middlebrow Holocaust movies that win Oscars aren't interested in engaging.
3. A Prophet
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Written by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit
Like all the great prison movies, this is a story about power. But not, in this case, the power of the jailers.
4. Coraline
Directed by Henry Selick
Written by Selick, from a novel by Neil Gaiman
A horror movie for children.
5. A Serious Man
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
"He went back to work. For a while he checked every patient's teeth for new messages. He didn't find any. In time, he found he'd stopped checking."
6. Jennifer's Body
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Written by Diablo Cody
A teen comedy so dark, it makes Heathers look like Saved by the Bell.
7. Broken Embraces
Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Almodóvar works wonders with the stuff of soap opera. Someday they should give him control of an actual soap opera, just to see what he does with it.
8. Funny People
Written and directed by Judd Apatow
Every now and then, Adam Sandler decides to demonstrate that he can act. No one is sure what prompts this, or why he does it so infrequently.
9. Four.Five.Three.Six.Five
Directed by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross
A couple of brothers bring their cameras to a Midwestern town. People let the filmmakers into their lives, because the filmmakers are already a part of their lives—they grew up there, same as their subjects, and they know this town well. Watch their rich portrait and you'll feel like you know it well too.
10. Daddy Longlegs
Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie
Written by the Safdies with Ronald Bronstein
A tale about a loving, charismatic, and deeply irresponsible dad. Your chance to see what
being raised part-time by a Cassavetes character would be like.
Honorable mentions:
11. Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani)
12. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
13. Cropsey (Joshua Zeman, Barbara Brancaccio)
14. Moon (Duncan Jones)
15. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
16. Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
17. The Thick of It 3 (Armando Iannucci)
18. Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams)
19. Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie)
20. Teclópolis (Javier Mrad)
And a shoutout to Gamer, which had the year's best dance number.
Of the films of 2009 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Impolex and Videocracy.