The "Top 10 of Each Year" Thread

Just copy and pasting some of my lists (then editing them) so I can look for them easily when I forget a film instead of scrolling back.





60s

1. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
2. L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
3. La Dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
4. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)
5. From Russia With Love (Terence Young, 1963)
6. Blue Movie/Fuck (Andy Warhol, 1969)
7. The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)
8. The Affair (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1967)
9. The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó, 1967)
10. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack, 1969) ***

#10 a narrow preference over Lawrence of Arabia and La Jetee, but They Shoot Horses feels like the fresher experience (having seen it recently) and the less boring choice, so let's go with that.



1974
1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
3. The Phantom of Liberty
4. The Godfather: Part 2
5. Je, tu, il, elle
6. Going Places
7. The SugarLand Express
8. Woman of the Ganges
9. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
10. Female Trouble

Maybe my favorite year of all time. I feel even #10 I rate at least an 8.5, but somehow I take in other factors than just enjoyment.

Edit* Text of Light, which I forgot, may go in place of any of the ones outside top 5.



70s
1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3. How Yukong Moved the Mountains
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5. The Phantom of Liberty
6. Apocalypse Now
7. The Godfather: Part 2
8. Barry Lyndon
9. Baxter, Vera Baxter
10. Asparagus

HonorMention: some Chantal Akerman



80s
1. Sans Soleil
2. Paris, Texas
3. Evil Dead II
4. Amadeus
5. Paradise Not Yet Lost, or Oona's Third Year
6. Street of Crocodiles
7. The Evil Dead
8. Stranger Than Paradise
9. Down By Law
10. Blood Simple



1988

1. Spoorloos
2. Akira
3. Tanner '88
4. They Live
5. Cinema Paradiso
6. A Fish Called Wanda
7. High Hopes
8. My Neighbor Totoro
9. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
10. A Short Film About Love

Rewatch needed: Running on Empty, Dekalog, Women on the blahblahblah, Mississippi Burning, Grave of the Fireflies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Die Hard, the Gilliam. Whole lotta stuff.




8/10 and 8.5/10 (the first two)



1. Spoorloos

2. Akira

3. They Live

4. A Fish Called Wanda

5. Cinema Paradiso, My Neighbor Totoro, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Gorillas in the Mist.



Then others (rated about 7 or 7.5) like: The Accused, A Short Film About Love, Damnation, and Talk Radio





1991


1. Queen of Diamonds
2. T-2: Judgment Day
3. The Comb
4. JFK
5. My Own Private Idaho
6. Thelma and Louise
7. Cape Fear
8. Bugsy
9. Beauty and the Beast
10. Raise the Red Lantern


Top 6 are all works of auteurs at the peak of their game. Strong year that Thelma and Louise doesn't even make my top 5. Cape Fear and Bugsy are terribly underrated and simply constrained to their eras a little bit if both more popular in their day. And the last 2 are simply movies I just enjoy but are mostly to fill up the last 2 spots, though not bad placeholders.



1992

1. Army of Darkness
2. Unforgiven
3. The Last of the Mohicans
4. Basic Instinct
5. Hard Boiled
6. Orlando
7. The Player
8. A Tale of Winter
9. Alien 3
10. Reservoir Dogs

HM: Far and Away




Oh yes, mama. Here is 1994-2003, my favorite 10 year streak of films. My starting phase of cinema. My passion for this period cannot be more stated. I got lists going all the way down to the knees.....and still better than most of my #1 films of the years of the 40s and 50s and certain other individual years.

1994

1. Chungking Express
2. To Live
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Ed Wood
5. Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels
6. True Lies
7. The Crow
8. Forrest Gump
9. Hoop Dreams
10. Speed

HM: U.S. Go Home, Interview With a Vampire

I'm confident of my #1..... then #2-4 are solid in their spots... perhaps interchangeable. And any of the movies from #5-9 could be in that last #5 spot. Speed, U.S. Go Home, and Interview With a Vampire are good not great, but worthy HMs.




1996

1. Ponette
2. Trainspotting
3. Secrets & Lies
4. Fargo
5. From Dusk Till Dawn
6. Star Trek: First Contact
7. Mars Attack!
8. Irma Vep
9. Sling Blade
10. Once a Thief

HM: Jerry Maguire, Escape from LA


Of that 1994-2003 period, this year and 2001 are the only years where the quality is not quite up to par with the high standards I hold for those 10 years. This year is Ponette, Trainspotting, and Secrets & Lies in a tier by itself. I feel like Fargo and From Dusk Till Dawn would make my top 10 in 1994, but the rest is.... not sure. Maybe Mars Attack! and Star Trek would be at the very end at #10, but the rest wouldn't be in consideration for any other of those years. Stuff like Once a Thief, Jerry Maguire, and especially..... Escape From L.A. (lol) seems to be here only because I like the directors. I don't actually like Escape From L.A. I don't think.





1997

Watch my enthusiasm for the greatest period of films. Cinema and film-going enthusiasm at one of its most exciting peaks. These bunch of films take awesome to a new level.


9
1. Princess Mononoke
2. L.A. Confidential
3. Gummo
4. Hana-bi
5. Happy Together

8.5
6. Lost Highway
7. The Ice Storm

8
8. The Wings of the Dove
9. Titanic
10. Starship Troopers
11. Eve's Bayou
12. Tomorrow Never Dies

7.5
13. Career Girls
14. Donnie Brasco
15. Chasing Amy/U-Turn



1999

1. The Insider
2. Belfast, Maine
3. The Matrix
4. Sleepy Hollow
5. The Blair Witch Project
6. Audition
7. The Straight Story
8. Boys Don't Cry
9. Girl, Interrupted
10. eXistenZ
11. Fantasia 2000
12. Election
13. Three Kings

HM: Beau Travail, Julien Donkey-Boy


Superb year but the top 4 (Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, American Beauty) is not the reason why. Could go down the list very far to find films that are still great. Only 2004 I could say that as confidently about. I don't even like Beau Travail and Julien Donkey-Boy so much, but I like the directors, and their styles are still apparent in those films. And there are still extremely solid films that don't even make my top 15.




2002

1. Far From Heaven
2. Catch Me If You Can
3. Spider Man
4. Insomnia
5. Blissfully Yours
6. City of God
7. Unknown Pleasures
8. Russian Ark
9. Blood Work
10. The Rules of Attraction

Worth mentioning: Lilya 4-ever, Hero, About Schmidt, Phone Booth, Demonlover, The Magdalene Sisters, Femme Fatale, Gerry, In My Skin, Irreversible

Rewatch needed: Talk to Her, Sympathy for Mr. Vengence, Infernal Affairs, 25th Hour, Morvern Callar


lel at Nolan, Fincher, and PTA fanboys coming out for even their lesser impressive efforts, though Insomnia is still pretty top kino - as it's #4 on my list. But it's not a masterpiece. There are no masterpieces this year.




2003:

10. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
9. All the Real Girls
8. Matchstick Men
7. Underworld
6. The Animatrix
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
4. The Brown Bunny
3. Elephant
2. Intolerable Cruelty
1. Lost in Translation (fuck off, old Hollywood fanboy from 2013) **


**As this was the year I became a cinephile, this year has a strong ingrained hold on me. There was an Old Hollywood fanboy from 2013 who kept trashing acclaimed modern films a few years back on IMDB, and he was deeply offended with the idea Lost in Translation makes it really high on my list. He made a top 200 list of "steaming pile of crap" and put it on his profile once; I didn't open it but I'm sure Lost in Translation was on there. He was a wacko, and a waste of human space.



Honorable mentions: (nothing spectacular, but they're enjoyable)

T-3: Rise of the Machines
Thirteen
Mystic River
Jeux d'enfants


Worth Mentioning: Destino, Twentynine Palms


This is a fantastic year. One of the 5 best of all time, if not #1 of all time. Probably my top 5 films listed here I prefer to anything in 2002.

Finding Nemo, Kill Bill: Volume 1, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Big Fish have not aged well from the most recent viewing 1-2 years ago. I used to be a fan of the first two, but now they feel dated. Oldboy is good. 21 Grams is not. Monster is a contender for the worst movie ever made.



2004

1. Notre Musique
2. 2046
3. Sideways
4. Collateral
5. Kill Bill: Volume 2
6. Paranoia Agent
7. Spider Man 2
8. Before Sunset
9. The Ladykillers
10. Shaun of the Dead



2005

1. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
2. Broken Flowers
3. Hard Candy
4. Sin City
5. Lady Vengence
6. Three Times
7. Grizzly Man
8. Match Point
9. The New World
10. Cache


HM: Memoirs of a Geisha, Revenge of the Sith, and Land of the Dead (guilty pleasures)




2006


I had a list at the time which was basically a Slant copycat. The IMDB patricians at the time was very influenced by anything Slant said. Imagined it changed a bit though, because I can't recall the titles of the obscure Asian movies anymore which Slant liked.


1. Marie Antoinette
2. Miami Vice
3. Casino Royale
4. 300
5. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
6. Still Life
7. Syndromes and a Century
8. Letters From Iwo Jima
9. A Scanner Darkly
10. Paprika



Little Miss Sunshine at the time I thought was laughable, but apart from feeling like occasional Apatow at times, I can see an argument for it fitting into the slice-of-life genre well.

Babel, The Painted Veil, Perfume, Apocalypto, United 93, The Curse of the Golden Flower, the The Pursuit of Happyness, and The Prestige are decent. A lot of movies didn't age well for me, but the main ones are The Fountain, The Queen, and..... last viewing of Children of Men really sucked the air out of my body, not that I much cared for it initially.

Need to watch: Woman on the Beach, Red Road, and I'm a Cyborg, But That's Ok (no idea why I hadn't seen these)



I must've seen like 100 movies from this year at the time (probably the most from any one year), but I'd have to agree with Avner that it's not a great year. Weird considering how the year you remember most fondly is actually a year where you'd struggle to make a worthy top 3. The top 2 is still dominant, and never changed, but beyond that.... Casino Royale (which is still a pretty great film) would definitely not make my top 6 in 2002, my top 7 in 2003, and top 10 in 2004. And it may not even make it below those either, but just not definite.




2007


Only putting what I enjoyed to a satisfactory degree.


1. Phantom Love
2. La Vie En Rose
3. Death Proof
4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
5. Gone Baby Gone
6. Ratatouille
7. Spider Man 3
8. Lust, Caution
9. No Country For Old Men
10. Zodiac

Margot at the Wedding, Into the Wild, My Blueberry Nights, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Love in the Time of Cholera, Persepolis, The Mourning Forest, Snow Angels, Atonement, and Mongol are not bad.



2008
1. In Bruges
2. Wall-E
3. Revanche
4. Wendy and Lucy
5. Definitely, Maybe
6. Three Monkeys
7. Happy-Go-Lucky
8. Quantum of Solace
9. Changeling
10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button


Actually not bad considering the 3 years that preceded it. Not that this year is better than those years, but at least there are some interesting titles that makes it and not just the usual ones you'd expect. Quite even across the board... the first 5 rate at 8/10, and the next 5 rate at 7.5/10




2009


1. Inglorious Basterds
2. Public Enemies
3. Up
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Star Trek
6. A Serious Man
7. Valhalla Rising
8. Zombieland
9. Drag Me To Hell
10. Knowing

HM: Invictus


Consistent year. Some latter day work from genre auteurs who were already great directors before this year's effort. But honestly, the last 5 years of the 00s are pretty weak realizing this now. The 5 best films are probably all in 2006+2007, and 2 of them rates at a 8.5/10, a little bit lower than masterpiece level.




2010

1. L'ete
2. True Grit
3. Inception
4. Toy Story 3
5. The Social Network
6. The Town
7. The Fighter
8. Meek's Cutoff
9. Somewhere
10. Another Year

HM: Winter's Bone


Dunno how I rank some of the last few, one of them had to be HM I guess. I don't feel The Social Network is at the level its acclaim suggests, but it still indicates a strong year when it's in my top 5. 2010 and 2011 are such improvements from the trepid 5 years that preceded.



2011

1. The Tragedy of Man
2. Two Years At Sea
3. The Turin Horse
4. Margaret
5. The Tree of Life
6. Killer Joe
7. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
8. The Help
9. Martha Marcy May Marlene
10. The Kid With a Bike

From #9-13, it was between MMMM, Kid With a Bike, House of Tolerance, The Descendants, and Sucker Punch - I opted to go with the first two even though.... the ones from #7-12 are all 7.5/10 or 7/10 at best. The top 6 is pretty fantastic though, and that's what makes this year good.


2013

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Three Landscapes
3. Pain and Gain
4. Blue Jasmine
5. Star Trek Into Darkness
6. Nymphomanic
7. Nobody's Daughter Haewon
8. Sharknado
9. Rush
10. Only Lovers Left Alive


The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, The Bling Ring, and Her are fine and would be next on my list, but they didn't match my first expectations.

I haven't seen Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, and Night Moves. Something tells me they'd make my list, or at least the first two would.



2014

1. Symphony no. 42
2. Sharknado 2
3. Interstellar
4. Wild
5. Goodbye to Language

HM: American Sniper, Two Days One Night, Inherent Vice, Gone Girl
Need to see: Birdman, Boyhood, Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash (more look forward to first 3 though)


Deepest year of the 2010s from what I see.