When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1931, it gave its Best Picture award to Cimarron, a mediocre western that aspires to be an epic. It isn't on my list.
1. Bimbo's Initiation
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Betty Boop: Final Secret of the Illuminati.
2. Monkey Business
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone
Starring the Marx Brothers as Maurice Chevalier.
3. Philips-Radio
Directed by Joris Ivens
Proof that an ad can be art.
4. M
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou
Instead of quoting a line from the film, can I quote the sound of a serial killer whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King"?
5. Le Million
Directed by René Clair
Written by Clair, from a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemand
Just a couple years into the sound era, and already Clair has made two great musicals. And he has a third one just a few notches below this.
6. La Chienne
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Renoir, from a novel by Georges de La Fouchardière
A man exploits a woman who exploits another man. In the end they all lose.
7. Frankenstein
Directed by James Whale
Written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort, from a play by Peggy Webling and a novel by Mary Shelley
"Now I know what it feels like to be God!"
8. A Nous La Liberte
Written and directed by René Clair
You can see why this always gets compared to Modern Times. They both treat the assembly line as a slapstick dystopia.
9. Blonde Crazy
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Written by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright
In the world's most half-hearted crime-doesn't-pay ending, only one of the con artists we've been watching goes to jail—and in the meantime, we find ourselves cheering the dissolution of a marriage. This is the sort of story the Powers That Be brought in the Motion Picture Code to stop.
10. Safe in Hell
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Joseph Jackson and Maude Fulton, from a play by Houston Branch
Of all the pre-Code movies in the world, this one just might be the pre-Codiest. It starts with a sympathetic prostitute burning down a hotel, and then it just rolls from there.
Honorable mentions:
11. Marius (Alexander Korda)
12. The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
13. The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst)
14. Douro, Faina Fluvial (Manoel de Oliveira)
15. Night Nurse (William A. Wellman)
16. Kameradschaft (G.W. Pabst)
17. Mask-a-Raid (Dave Fleischer)
18. A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda)
19. Waterloo Bridge (James Whale)
20. Bosko the Doughboy (Hugh Harman)
Finally, a shoutout to Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde, which might have made it into the top 20 if Robert Williams had dialed back the smug by about 30%.
Of the films of 1931 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Rich and Strange.
And with that, the series stops. For the record, my favorite film of 1921 is The High Sign. But I haven't seen enough good movies from '21 to assemble a full top 10, so this year's crop of lists ends here.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1941, it gave its Best Picture award to How Green Was My Valley, a cloying "quality" movie from John Ford. (The first rule of watching a Ford film: The more it's visibly trying to be artistic, the less likely it is to be good art.) That one isn't on my list.
1. Citizen Kane
Directed by Orson Welles
Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz
I don't think it's the best movie ever made, or even the best movie to be made by Orson Welles. But I'm not enough of a contrarian to deny that it's the best movie of 1941.
2. The Maltese Falcon
Directed by John Huston
Written by Huston, from a novel by Dashiell Hammett
Humphrey Bogart never looked or sounded as bleak as he did saying, "All we've got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you."
3. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Directed by Edward F. Cline
Written by W.C. Fields
This is Fields' funniest film. That's saying a lot.
4. The Sea Wolf
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Robert Rossen, from a novel by Jack London
This is as good as Edward G. Robinson gets. That is also saying a lot.
5. Meet John Doe
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin, from a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell, Sr.
In this movie's landscape of mutating memes, isn't just the audience that has a life of its own. The fictions that were supposed to manipulate that audience turn out to be beyond anyone's control too.
6. Hellzapoppin'
Directed by H.C. Potter
Written by Nat Perrin and Warren Wilson
Between this one and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, it was a great year for pop surrealism.
7. Schichlegruber: Doing the Lambeth Walk
Directed by Charles A. Ridley
YouTube avant la lettre.
8. The Wolf Man
Directed by George Waggner
Written by Curt Siodmak
This isn't the last good movie in the Universal Monsters series, but it is the last essential one. Unless you count Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
9. Ball of Fire
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
"It's as red as The Daily Worker and just as sore!"
10. The Lady Eve
Directed by Preston Sturges
Written by Sturges, from a story by Monckton Hoffe
This one narrowly beat out the great Sullivan's Travels for a spot in the top 10 because I wince a bit at that "cockeyed world" speech at the end of Sullivan. But if you want to count them as a tie and call this slot a Preston Sturges double-header, that's fine with me.
Honorable mentions:
11. Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges)
12. Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock)
13. Tortoise Beats Hare (Tex Avery)
14. The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle)
15. Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen)
16. Among the Living (Stuart Heisler)
17. Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen)
18. Ladies in Retirement (Charles Vidor)
19. The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood)
20. The Iron Crown (Alessandro Blasetti)
Plus a bonus award to Victor Mature, who had big roles in two pictures bubbling under my top 20: The Shanghai Gesture, a gloriously mad mess that has become a cult favorite, and I Wake Up Screaming, a curious quasi-noir that really ought to be a cult favorite. Mature plays rather different characters in that pair of pictures, but he plays them the same way: as a sleazy Cary Grant. That's just as great as it sounds.
Of the films of 1941 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Swamp Water.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1951, it gave its Best Picture award to An American in Paris, a musical that I neither dislike nor am especially fond of. Any of these would have been a better choice:
1. Ace in the Hole
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman
Wilder's darkest, bleakest film. But it's still a funny one.
2. Strangers on a Train
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Czenzi Ormonde, Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook, and Ben Hecht, from a novel by Patricia Highsmith
Walker's 32nd Law: You shouldn't bother trying to remake a Hitchcock movie. Corollary to Walker's 32nd Law: If you absolutely must remake a Hitchcock movie, for the love of God don't give your starring role to Billy Crystal.
3. The Thing from Another World
Directed by Christian Nyby and/or Howard Hawks
Written by Hawks, Charles Lederer, and Ben Hecht, from a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
"An intellectual carrot? The mind boggles."
4. A Streetcar Named Desire
Directed by Elia Kazan
Written by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul, from a play by Williams
Yes, they bowdlerized the play, but I have yet to see a better performance of it. No, not even the one with Marge Simpson.
5. The Tales of Hoffmann
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Powell, Pressburger, and Dennis Arundell, from an opera by Jacques Offenbach and Jules Barbier
Many years ago, I watched this in the middle of the night while my wife was out of town. Our daughter woke up in her crib and started crying, so I let her rest with me and the movie; looking at the dancers calmed her down. The next time someone tells you this is a "difficult" film, remember that a baby can enjoy it.
6. The Lavender Hill Mob
Directed by Charles Crichton
Written by T.E.B. Clarke
"I propagate British cultural depravity."
7. Miracle in Milan
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Written by De Sica, Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Mario Chiari, and Adolfo Franci, from a novel by Zavattini
A strange hybrid of neorealism and fantasy, with squatters using witchcraft to battle the authorities. My favorite De Sica film.
8. The Man in the White Suit
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Written by Mackendrick, and Roger MacDougall, John Dighton
Unions and corporate chieftains join forces to suppress an invention that would make their industry unnecessary. Screw Star Wars: This is Alec Guinness' best science-fiction movie.
9. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Written and directed by Albert Lewin
The high point in Jack Cardiff's career as a cinematographer.
10. Bellissima
Directed by Luchino Visconti
Written by Visconti, Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, and Francesco Rosi
For a comedy, this made me awfully sad.
Honorable mentions:
11. People Will Talk (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
12. The African Queen (John Huston)
13. Four Ways Out (Pietro Germi)
14. Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
15. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray)
16. He Ran All the Way (John Berry)
17. Susana (Luis Buñuel)
18. Rabbit Fire (Chuck Jones)
19. The Man from Planet X (Edgar G. Ulmer)
20. The Tall Target (Anthony Mann)
Of the films of 1951 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Venom and Eternity.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1961, it gave its Best Picture award to West Side Story, a musical with vivid cinematography, an excellent score, and a lousy script. I prefer these:
1. Yojimbo
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Kurosawa and Ryûzô Kikushima, from a novel by Dashiell Hammett
It was based on Red Harvest, it inspired A Fistful of Dollars, and it managed, impressively, to be better than both.
2. Lola
Written and directed by Jacques Demy
The Short Cuts of the French New Wave.
3. Yanco
Directed by Servando González
Written by González, from a story by Jesús Marín
I'm not sure if this Mexican movie is available with English subtitles, but that doesn't really matter: There's hardly any dialogue, and when the characters do occasionally talk the words aren't all that important. The movie's sound, on the other hand, is very important indeed.
4. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
Directed by Karel Zeman
Written by Zerman, Josef Kainar, and Jiří Brdečka, from a story cycle by Rudolf Erich Raspe
This film feels like it's set in a Cornell box.
5. Chronicle of a Summer
Directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin
A documentary thorough enough to include a scene where the cast critiques the movie.
6. The Hustler
Directed by Robert Rossen
Written by Rossen and Sidney Carroll, from a novel by Walter Tevis
"You have the best excuse in the world for losing. No trouble losing when you got a good excuse. Winning, that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey."
7. The Innocents
Directed by Jack Clayton
Written by William Archibald, Truman Capote, and John Mortimer, from a novel by Henry James
A slow-burning horror flick inspired by The Turn of the Screw.
8. The Exiles
Written and directed by Kent MacKenzie
Life in L.A.'s Bunker Hill before the planners tore it down.
9. The Ladies Man
Directed by Jerry Lewis
Written by Lewis and Bill Richmond
If you really want to know why "the French" love Jerry Lewis, this is the picture to watch. The sets could have come from a Tati film, the story shatters more narrative conventions than anything by Godard, and tracking all the Freudian undercurrents could serve as a cineastes' full employment act. Beyond that, it's pretty damn funny. I could do without a couple of sappy scenes with Pat Stanley, but otherwise this is Lewis in peak form.
10. Eugene
Written and directed by Ernie Kovacs and Joseph Behar
Kovacs was the first genius of TV comedy, experimenting with television the way an earlier generation of clown-artists experimented with film. That inventive spirit is on display in this surreal ABC special, which obviously owes a lot to the silent era but looks forward much more than it looks back.
Honorable mentions:
11. Blast of Silence (Allen Baron)
12. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
13. Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi)
14. Underworld U.S.A. (Sam Fuller)
15. Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
16. Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz)
17. One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)
18. Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
19. Killers on Parade (Masahiro Shinoda)
20. Zoo (Bert Haanstra)
Of the films of 1961 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in La Notte.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1971, it gave its Best Picture award to The French Connection, a thriller that I enjoyed but whose exalted reputation mystifies me. I like these better:
1. The Last Picture Show
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Written by Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry, from a novel by McMurtry
I'm not sure if this counts as a "modern western," but if it does, it's my favorite modern western.
2. A Clockwork Orange
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Kubrick, from a novel by Anthony Burgess
And for those people who would reduce every story to a simple political message, a quick reminder: A film can present two ugly alternatives without advocating either one.
3. Mon Oncle Antoine
Directed by Claude Jutra
Written by Jutra and Clément Perron
One of the darkest Christmas movies this side of Pandora's Box, but with some fleeting moments of genuine joy too.
4. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Altman and Brian McKay, from a novel by Edmund Naughton
Altman does to the western what he did a year earlier to the war movie and would do over the following few years to the private eye film, the gangster picture, and the musical.
5. They Might Be Giants
Directed by Anthony Harvey
Written by James Goldman, from his play
My favorite Sherlock Holmes movie, though strictly speaking Sherlock Holmes isn't in it.
6. Walkabout
Directed by Nicholas Roeg
Written by Edward Bond
An enigmatic film about desire, communication breakdown, and the beautiful, treacherous Australian landscape.
7. Trafic
Directed by Jacques Tati
Written by Tati, Jacques Lagrange, and Bert Haanstra
It's a worthy follow-up to Play Time, and if it isn't quite as good...well, not every movie needs to be a masterpiece.
8. Bananas
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Mickey Rose
"All children under 16 years old are now: 16 years old."
9. Macbeth
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Polanski and Kenneth Tynan, from a play by William Shakespeare
Welles did Macbeth as a film noir. Kurosawa did it as a samurai picture. And Polanski did it as a Hammer horror movie.
10. Dirty Harry
Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims
A peeping-tom cop is driven to sadism by the horrors of street crime and his department's inability to contain it. In the sequels he becomes an almost cuddly character, but here Harry Callahan is easy to empathize with but hard to like: an antihero in a movie with more nuances than many critics will admit.
Honorable mentions:
11. The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda)
12. W.R.—Mysteries of the Organism (Dušan Makavejev)
13. Duck, You Sucker (Sergio Leone)
14. Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman)
15. Klute (Alan J. Pakula)
16. The Hospital (Arthur Hiller)
17. A New Leaf (Elaine May)
18. Jabberwocky (Jan Švankmajer)
19. Basic Training (Frederic Wiseman)
20. Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood)
Best monologue: Elliott Gould on writing letters to the spy who reads his mail, in Little Murders.
Of the films of 1971 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Out 1 and The Working Class Goes to Heaven.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked at 1981, it gave its Best Picture award to Chariots of Fire, the film that appears in the dictionary next to the phrase "Oscar bait." Here are some better ways to spend your time:
1. The Decline...of Western Civilization
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
If this isn't the best rock doc ever made, it's certainly the funniest.
2. Coup de Torchon
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
Written by Tavernier and Jean Aurenche, from a novel by Jim Thompson
Apparently, a Jim Thompson story still works when you transpose it to colonial Africa.
3. Blow Out
Written and directed by Brian De Palma
Like Blow Up crossed with a '70s conspiracy thriller.
4. Lola
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Written by Fassbinder, Pea Fröhlich, and Peter Märthesheimer
Another conspiracy movie, sort of. One where everyone in town but one is in on the conspiracy.
5. Mephisto
Directed by István Szabó
Written by Szabó and Péter Dobai, from a novel by Klaus Mann
In 2006 it emerged that Szabó had been an informant in the aftermath of Hungary's failed 1956 revolution. He claimed at first that he had done this to save a friend's life, then admitted that this was a self-serving lie. I relate these unpleasant details not to criticize this absorbing film, but to suggest that its textured portrait of an opportunist adjusting to life under totalitarian rule might have a touch of self-lacerating autobiography to it.
6. Gallipoli
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by David Williamson, from a story by Weir
One of the great antiwar movies. Such a shame about the soundtrack.
7. Time Bandits
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written by Gilliam and Michael Palin
"Why does there have to be evil?" "I think it has something to do with free will."
8. Polyester
Written and directed by John Waters
Few motion pictures are this cruel to a protagonist. Even fewer manage to be this funny in the process.
9. Stations of the Elevated
Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer
For anyone who ever suspected that a city's true public art is its billboards and graffiti.
10. The Aviator's Wife
Written and directed by Éric Rohmer
This starts with the sort of misunderstanding that has fueled a thousand sitcoms, then takes the story in a messier, more emotionally authentic direction.
Honorable mentions:
11. Modern Romance (Albert Brooks)
12. Songs for Swinging Larvae (Graeme Whifler)
13. Ms.45 (Abel Ferrara)
14. Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris)
15. America is Waiting (Bruce Conner)
16. God's Angry Man (Werner Herzog)
17. Once in a Lifetime (Toni Basil, David Byrne)
18. Pixote (Hector Babenco)
19. Hôtel des Amériques (André Téchiné)
20. Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen)
Of the films of 1981 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Huie's Sermon.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1991, it gave its Best Picture award to The Silence of the Lambs. There are things that I like about that highbrow slasher flick, and there are things that I don't; it squeezed its way into my honorable mentions, but it didn't make the top 10.
1. The Rapture
Written and directed by Michael Tolkin
The best movie ever made about apocalyptic Christianity.
2. Hearts of Darkness
Directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper
A behind-the-scenes look at Apocalypse Now that doubles as a remake of Apocalypse Now.
3. Homicide
Written and directed by David Mamet
"When you start cumming with the customers, it's time to quit."
4. Raise the Red Lantern
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Written by Zhen Ni, from a novel by Su Tong
"It's all playacting. If you play well, you fool the others. If you play badly, you only fool yourself. If you can't even fool yourself, you can fool the ghosts."
5. Tribulation 99
Written and directed by Craig Baldwin
We'll get to JFK soon enough. But this is the great sprawling conspiracy epic of 1991.
6. Blooper Bunny
Directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon
Written by Ford, Lennon, and Ronnie Schelb
One of the few latter-day Bugs Bunny cartoons that retains the edge of the originals.
7. JFK
Directed by Oliver Stone
Written by Stone and Zachary Sklar
Stone throws so many theories into this movie that his psychedelic montages take on a life of their own; the cascading images and ideas sweep aside any single story about what happened in Dallas in 1963. As a result, whether he intended it or not, the film looks less like an historical thesis and more like a panoramic view of the psychic landscape in paranoid post-assassination America. Needless to say, that's much more interesting than the standard Oliver Stone message-movie.
8. Slacker
Written and directed by Richard Linklater
Obsessive geeks, conspiracy theorists, alt-media weirdos, an anarchist invoking Guy Fawkes, even a "Ron Paul: Libertarian for President" sign: Here is your guide to the ensuing 30 years of the counterculture.
9. Point Break
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Written by W. Peter Iliff
I'll tip my hat to Andrew Sarris and call this "expressive esoterica."
10. Prime Suspect
Directed by Christopher Menaul
Written by Lynda La Plante
How amazed I was by this miniseries when it first came out. A police procedural whose solution wasn't telegraphed from the beginning. With red herrings that might actually mislead you. On television! In those days this was just about unheard-of.
Honorable mentions:
11. Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro)
12. Blood in the Face (Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, James Ridgeway)
13. The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
14. Zentropa (Lars von Trier)
15. Little Man Tate (Jodie Foster)
16. Dogfight (Nancy Savoca)
17. Thanksgiving Prayer (Gus Van Sant)
18. The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (Jan Švankmajer)
19. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme)
20. Flirting (John Duigan)
Of the films of 1991 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in A Brighter Summer Day.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 2001, it gave its Best Picture award to A Beautiful Mind, a biopic that starts strong, peaks with an ably executed plot twist, and then gradually degenerates into crap. It isn't on my list.
1. Mulholland Drive
Written and directed by David Lynch
In dreams it isn't unusual for a person to switch identities, for one figure to turn into several (and vice versa), or for time to fall out of joint. And as Lynch's soap opera evolves into a horror movie, it follows the logic of an especially nightmarish dream.
2. Spirited Away
Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki
All of Miyazaki's fairy tales are wonderful, but this is the one I like the most.
3. Y Tu Mamá También
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Written by Cuarón and Carlos Cuarón
As engrossing as the plot is, what really lingers after this picture are the details of a larger world lurking in the background while the protagonists obliviously zoom by.
4. Sex and Lucia
Written and directed by Julio Médem
The picture that proved DV could be used as artfully as film—and did it by embracing the alleged drawbacks of the medium. I imagine Médem talking with his cinematographer: "So the sky looks washed out? OK; see if you can make that beautiful."
5. The Man Who Wasn't There
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
"He told them to look not at the facts but at the meaning of the facts, and then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going."
6. Donnie Darko
Written and directed by Richard Kelly
Harvey meets Carnival of Souls.
7. The Office
Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
Steve Kurtz always gives me a hard time when I put a season of a TV show on one of these lists. Well, look: This is a coherent three-hour story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Feel free to give me some shit if I start slipping in some seasons of the American Office, which is amazing at its best but is also more sprawling and open-ended. But these six episodes could be a miniseries.
8. Waking Life
Written and directed by Richard Linklater
Alex Jones' cameo haunts this movie the way Donald Trump's walk-on role haunts Home Alone 2, but as far as I'm concerned that just adds to the effect. (Reason #23,000 not to trust the Motion Picture Academy: It found room for Jimmy Neutron among its Best Animated Feature nominees, but not for this.)
9. The Sopranos 3
Written by David Chase, Todd A. Kessler, Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess, Terence Winter, Lawrence Konner, Frank Renzulli, Michael Imperioli, Salvatore J. Stabile, and Tim Van Patten
Directed by Van Patten, Allen Coulter, Henry J. Bronchtein, John Patterson, Jack Bender, Daniel Attias, and Steve Buscemi
Yes, more television. Come on: They're all moving pictures, right?
10. Lantana
Directed by Ray Lawrence
Written by Andrew Bovell
"This is not an affair. It's a one-night stand that happened twice."
Honorable mentions:
11. The Pledge (Sean Penn)
12. Storytelling (Todd Solondz)
13. Claire (Milford Thomas)
14. Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
15. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
16. The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
17. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
18. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5 (Joss Whedon)
19. The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (Gerrit van Dijk)
20. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
That item at #18 is the fifth season of a television show—sorry, Steve!—so Whedon is listed as the showrunner, not the director. Though he did, as it happens, also direct some individual episodes.
Of the films of 2001 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Fat Girl.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1930, it gave its Best Picture award to All Quiet on the Western Front. The book is better but the movie is good, and you'll find it in my list of honorable mentions. But it isn't the year's best picture. It isn't even the year's best picture about World War I.
1. Earth
Written and directed by Alexander Dovzhenko
This was supposed to be a Soviet propaganda film calling for the collectivization of agriculture, but Dovzhenko got away with making something much more interesting. It's lyrical, sometimes funny, more surrealist than socialist, more pagan than political; the propaganda parts play like tongue-in-cheek interludes. Stalin objected strenuously. There would not be many more movies like this as long as he was around.
2. People on Sunday
Directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer
Written by Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak
One of the last great silent pictures, and one of the first great efforts by a gang of young filmmakers who would soon be fleeing Germany for America. Besides Wilder, Ulmer, and the Siodmak brothers, the future Hollywood hands include the photographer, Fred "Oklahoma!" Zinnemann.
3. Swing You Sinners!
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Eight years before Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD, the Fleischer brothers animated a bad trip.
4. Le Roman de Renard
Directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz and Irene Starewicz
Written by I. Starewicz, Roger Richebé, Jean Nohain, and Antoinette Nordmann
Reynard the Fox, a trickster figure from French folklore, stars in a batty stop-motion masterpiece.
5. Animal Crackers
Directed by Victor Heerman
Written by Morrie Ryskind, from a play by Ryskind and George S. Kaufman
"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."
6. L'Age d'Or
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Salvador Dali
A few years later, Dali wrote a script for the Marx Brothers. They never made the movie, so you'll have to settle for an Animal Crackers/L'Age d'Or double feature instead.
7. Under the Roofs of Paris
Written and directed by René Clair
An early sign that filmmakers could use sound without forgetting everything else they'd learned about their craft. This has all the fluidity of the best silent movies, but it's a musical.
8. A Propos de Nice
Written and directed by Jean Vigo
Like Salt for Svanetia, listed one notch below, A Propos de Nice is a radical documentary. But this one was made by an anarchist, not a Leninist, and it has far more respect for the ordinary people onscreen.
9. Salt for Svanetia
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
Written by Kalatozov and Sergei Tretyakov
The anti-Earth: Communist propaganda proclaiming how wonderful it is that the Bolsheviks are bringing a backward village into civilization. It's a lie, but it's an artful lie; you can damn the picture's politics while admiring the talent on display.
10. Westfront 1918
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Written by Ladislaus Vajda, from a novel by Ernst Johannsen
This year's other, better movie about the Western Front.
Honorable mentions:
11. Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch)
12. The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg)
13. Borderline (Kenneth MacPherson)
14. Romance Sentimentale (Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov)
15. The Essence of the Fair (Ernesto Giménez Caballero)
16. Crabes et Crevettes (Jean Painlevé)
17. Mechanical Principles (Ralph Steiner)
18. The Big House (George W. Hill)
19. All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
20. La Petite Lise (Jean Grémillon)
Of the films of 1930 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Part Time Wife.
I don't know enough good movies from 1920 to assemble a top 10, so I'm going to stop this year's batch of movie lists here. (For the record, my favorite from 1920 is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and my favorite from 1910 is Le Binettoscope.) We'll start this again in December, when it'll be time to tackle 2011.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1940, it gave its Best Picture award to Rebecca, a Daphne du Maurier joint. That one is in my top 10, but it isn't at the apex:
1. The Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt, from a play by Philip Barry
This one hits its high point when Katharine Hepburn starts wandering around drunk after dark.
2. His Girl Friday
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Charles Lederer, from a play by Hecht and MacArthur
"Walter, you're wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way."
3. The Bank Dick
Directed by Edward F. Cline
Written by W.C. Fields
"Shall I bounce a rock off his head?" "Respect your father, darling. What kind of a rock?"
4. A Wild Hare
Directed by Tex Avery
Written by Rich Hogan
The ur-text for the Bugs Bunny cycle.
5. They Drive By Night
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay, from a novel by A.I. Bezzerides
The first great truck-driving movie.
6. Rebecca
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald, and Michael Hogan, from a novel by Daphne du Maurier
The only Hitchcock movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, a fact that says much more about the Academy's prejudices than it does about the film's place in the director's body of work. It isn't top-tier Hitchcock, but it's still an enjoyably atmospheric Gothic tale.
7. Christmas in July
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
One of Sturges' sweeter comedies, but it has a sardonic bite.
8. Dance, Girl, Dance
Directed by Dorothy Arzner
Written by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, from a story by Vicki Baum
The flipside of all those Tex Avery cartoons about the Big Bad Wolf. (Someone should screen it with Red Hot Riding Hood as the opening short.) There is more emotional depth here than you'll find in the average low-budget melodrama, and there's an unexpected feminist edge.
9. The Grapes of Wrath
Directed by John Ford
Written by Nunnally Johnson, from a novel by John Steinbeck
Ford made genre films and he made "prestige" films. Most of the prestige pictures aren't very good, but this one's an exception: It may get a little heavy-handed at times—feel free to wince during Henry Fonda's final monologue—but it's filled with vivid moments, particularly the stunning dust-bowl sequence at the start.
10. Contraband
Directed by Michael Powell
Written by Emeric Pressburger with Powell and Brock Williams
If Peeping Tom is Powell's Psycho, then this is his 39 Steps.
Honorable mentions:
11. Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)
12. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
13. The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan)
14. The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
15. Pinocchio (Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske)
16. Swinging the Lambeth Walk (Len Lye)
17. The Westerner (William Wyler)
18. Seven Sinners (Tay Garnett)
19. Tarantella (Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth)
20. The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall)
Brilliant Sequence in an Otherwise Unexceptional Movie: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland kiss in a cab, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante
Brilliant Sequence in an Otherwise Overpraised Move: the shaving scene in The Great Dictator
Of the films of 1940 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Sea Hawk.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1950, it gave its Best Picture award to a backstage drama called All About Eve. That one made it onto my honorable mentions list, but it didn't break into the top 10:
1. Orpheus
Written and directed by Jean Cocteau
Dreams, death, mirrors, mysterious radio transmissions, and the underworld.
2. Rashomon
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, from two stories by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa
Four versions of the same event. Each account seems to circle closer to the truth, Kane-style, but by the time it's over you may doubt that you could ever arrive at the full facts.
3. Harvey
Directed by Henry Koster
Written by Mary Chase, Oscar Brodney, and Myles Connolly, from a play by Chase
"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."
4. Sunset Blvd.
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman Jr.
Part jet-black comedy, part backlot noir. If they burned all the movies about making movies, this is the one I'd miss the most.
5. Where the Sidewalk Ends
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Ben Hecht with Victor Trivas, Frank P. Rosenberg, and Robert E. Kent, from a novel by William L. Stuart
"I didn't know a guy could hate that much. Not even you."
6. Les Enfants Terribles
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by Melville and Jean Cocteau, from a novel by Cocteau
This feels more like a Cocteau movie than a Melville movie, and Cocteau was in fact present for some of the filming. At one point he called out "Cut!" while a scene was being shot, compelling Melville to throw him off the set.
7. Gone to Earth
Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
The images of nature here are so vivid and haunting that I'm not sure if they're underlining the characters' passions or if those passions are just a temporary extension of the landscape.
8. In a Lonely Place
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Written by Andrew Solt with Edmund H. North, from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes
This and Sunset Blvd. would make an interesting double bill.
9. Night and the City
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Jo Eisinger, from a novel by Gerald Kersh
After you watch this, look up the contemporaneous reviews that damned it as sordid trash. Then ask yourself which entertainments being damned in similar terms today will turn out to be enduring works of art.
10. House by the River
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Mel Dinelli, from a novel by A.P. Herbert
This low-budget Southern Gothic noir didn't get much attention when it came out, and Lang later said he didn't care for it. I think it's one of the best films he made in America.
Honorable mentions:
11. Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini)
12. The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston)
13. Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel)
14. Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones)
15. Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann)
16. La Beauté du Diable (René Clair)
17. All About Eve (Joseph L. Manckiewicz)
18. Story of a Love Affair (Michelangelo Antonioni)
19. Last Holiday (Henry Cass)
20. Devil's Doorway (Anthony Mann)
Of the films of 1950 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in En Passant Par La Lorraine.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1960, it gave its Best Picture award to Billy Wilder's The Apartment. I don't often say this, but the Academy got it exactly right.
1. The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
A comic drama—or dramatic comedy?—about the corrupting effects of hierarchy, and what it means to actually assert your freedom. The best American director's best film.
2. Cruel Story of Youth
Written and directed by Nagisa Oshima
The Japanese Rebel Without a Cause, which I actually like better than the original Rebel Without a Cause.
3. Psycho
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Joseph Stefano, from a novel by Robert Bloch
It's a revered classic now, but back in the day this was widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw.
4. La Dolce Vita
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, from a story by Fellini, Flaiano, and Pinelli
"Don't be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls."
5. The Little Shop of Horrors
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Charles B. Griffith
There's a lot to like in this low-budget horror-comedy, including a very young Jack Nicholson in the role Bill Murray would play in the musical remake. But my favorite bit is the pair of cops on loan from Dragnet and their deadpan conversations. "How are the kids?" "Lost one yesterday." "How'd that happen?" "Playing with matches." "Well, those are the breaks."
6. Le Trou
Directed by Jacques Becker
Written by Jacques Becker, José Giovanni, and Jean Aurel, from a novel by Giovanni
A prison-break procedural.
7. Peeping Tom
Directed by Michael Powell
Wirtten by Leo Marks
Like Psycho, this was widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw. But while Psycho was a huge hit for Hitchcock, Peeping Tom practically destroyed Powell's career.
8. The Virgin Spring
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ulla Isaksson
Unlike Psycho and Peeping Tom, this highbrow revenge flick was not widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw. But this is the one that was remade as The Last House on the Left.
9. The Young One
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Hugo Butler, from a story by Peter Matthiessen
Much more complicated than the typical racial message-movie.
10. The Housemaid
Written and directed by Kim Ki-young
This Korean thriller progresses steadily from film noir to horror before revealing it belonged all along to a larger genre: the male fantasy disguised as a nightmare.
Honorable mentions:
11. Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau)
12. Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut)
13. Comanche Station (Budd Boetticher)
14. Purple Noon (René Clément)
15. Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla)
16. Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
17. Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame)
18. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
19. Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa)
20. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
Footnote: Someone really ought to remake Tunes of Glory as a catty backstage musical with an all-girl cast.
Of the films of 1960 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Cloud-Clapped Star.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1970, it gave its Best Picture award to Patton, a military biopic co-written by a kid named Francis Ford Coppola, who would go on to make The Godfather, and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, who had just helmed Planet of the Apes. And isn't Patton ultimately a cross between The Godfather and Planet of the Apes?
(What's that? It isn't? Damn, you might be right. But it sounded good for a couple of seconds.)
Anyway. Patton is a good movie, but I like these better:
1. Five Easy Pieces
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Written by Carole Eastman, from a story by Rafelson and Eastman
Jack Nicholson gets a chance to play the lead, and he doesn't waste it. From here through Cuckoo's Nest, he'll be one of the most essential actors working in Hollywood.
2. MASH
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Ring Lardner Jr., from a novel by H. Richard Hornberger and W.C. Heinz
This is, among other things, the greatest football movie ever made.
3. Gimme Shelter
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin
Yes, I'm rating the Altamont movie higher than the Woodstock movie.
4. Le Boucher
Written and directed by Claude Chabrol
Chabrol's debt to Hitchcock is even more obvious than usual here, but this is more than mere imitation. If Hitch had made this, we'd be calling it Chabrolian.
5. The Honeymoon Killers
Written and directed by Leonard Kastle
It's tense, bleak, and artful. I should probably add, just in case you're the sort who is put off by such things, that it's also a low-budget exploitation flick about serial killers.
6. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Directed by Elio Petri
Written by Petri and Ugo Pirro
It was a banner year for anti-fascist films by Italian leftists, and this was the best of the crop.
7. Hospital
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
One of several searing documentaries Wiseman made about life in different total institutions—in this case, an urban hospital.
8. Bed and Board
Directed by François Truffaut
Written by Truffaut, Claude de Givray, and Bernard Revon
400 Blows 4: The Voyage Home.
9. The Conformist
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by Bertolucci, from a novel by Alberto Moravia
"Ten years ago, my father was in Munich. Often, after the theater, he told me that he'd go with friends to a bierstube. There was a nutty man they thought a fool. He spoke about politics. He was quite an attraction. They'd buy him beer and encourage him. He'd stand up on the table making furious speeches. It was Hitler."
10. Le Cercle Rouge
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
"All men are guilty. They're born innocent, but it doesn't last."
Honorable mentions:
11. La Rupture (Claude Chabrol)
12. Claire's Knee (Éric Rohmer)
13. Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh)
14. Chicken Real (Les Blank)
15. Wanda (Barbara Loden)
16. Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy)
17. Tristana (Luis Buñuel)
18. Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski)
19. Little Big Man (Arthur Penn)
20. Original Cast Album: Company (D.A. Pennebaker)
Of the films of 1970 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Twelve Chairs.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1980, it gave its Best Picture award to Ordinary People, an after-school special with high production values. It isn't on my list. The year's most commercially successful movie was The Empire Strikes Back. It's one of the few Star Wars pictures that's actually pretty good—but it's not good enough for the list. The most historically significant film of the year was probably Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, a longwinded western whose out-of-control budget and skimpy box office receipts brought the New Hollywood era to an end. It has a bad reputation, but I mostly like it, flaws and all. But I didn't put it on my list either.
1. Mon Oncle d'Amerique
Directed by Alain Resnais
Written by Jean Gruault
A severely determinist vision, bordering on paranoia, in which human choices are little more than the involuntary responses of mice in mazes. Its storylines are fictional but the figure at the center of the movie—the sociobiologist Henri Laborit—is real, putting the picture at the little-traveled intersection where documentaries meet science fiction.
2. Melvin and Howard
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Written by Bo Goldman
Demme's early movies tended toward eccentric Americana, and this one is the most eccentric and American of them all.
3. The Long Good Friday
Directed by John Mackenzie
Written by Barrie Keeffe
Bob Hoskins plays a gangster boss, and that really ought to be enough to get you to watch the picture right there.
4. UFOria
Written and directed by John Binder
Surely the only flying saucer movie in which key plot points turn on the protagonist's physical resemblance to Waylon Jennings.
5. The Stunt Man
Directed by Richard Rush
Written by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus, from a novel by Paul Brodeur
I was blown away by this one when I saw it at age 18, and I renewed my affections for it by rewatching it every few years. Then I set it aside for awhile, pulled it out again in my thirties, and got the uncomfortable feeling that I'd outgrown it. Suddenly the lead character seemed like an asshole; his romance with the leading lady seemed implausible and contrived; the film-within-a-film seemed pretentious and inane. But I'll still put it here for old time's sake, and because Peter O'Toole and Allen Garfield are great in it, and because the movie is still entertaining even if it isn't all that profound. Besides, there's always the possibility that those flaws are supposed to be deliberate ironies. Maybe I should watch it again.
6. Bronco Billy
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Dennis Hackin
If Mon Oncle d'Amerique's determinist worldview was too depressing for you, let Bronco Billy be the antidote. It's a celebration of individual freedom, extolling America as a place where people can jettison their old identities and reinvent themselves. As clear a statement of Eastwood's libertarian values as you'll find this side of The Outlaw Josey Wales.
7. Kagemusha
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Akira Kurosawa and Masato Ide
"When the original is gone, what will happen to the double?"
8. The Falls
Written and directed by Peter Greenaway
Imagine The Birds as a surrealist encyclopedia.
9. Raging Bull
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Scorsese, Mardik Martin, Paul Schrader, and Robert De Niro, from a memoir by Jake LaMotta with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage
Not an easy movie to watch, but the De Niro and Pesci performances are enough to earn it a place on this list.
10. The Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Kubrick and Diane Johnson, from a novel by Stephen King
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All wor—
Honorable mentions:
11. Bad Timing (Nicholas Roeg)
12. Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
13. Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (Les Blank)
14. The Last Metro (François Truffaut)
15. Bye Bye Brazil (Carlos Diegues)
16. Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)
17. Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper)
18. The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty)
19. Ashes to Ashes (David Mallet, David Bowie)
20. The Blues Brothers (John Landis)
Finally, let's have a shoutout to the final installment of Berlin Alexanderplatz. The miniseries as a whole may be 5 or 10 hours longer than it needs to be, but that 14th episode is sublime.
Of the films of 1980 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Alligator.
