Every year has its yield of worthy movies. A casual viewer can list ten(or even more) good works in any given year, but the great films are few and far between. In most years, there are maybe one to three films of greatness. There are also dry spells, bereft of not even one great film for the entire year, and the rare bumper harvests of several great ones.
The biggest movie buzz at the year’s end is, of course, about the Oscar ceremony, which still commands attention(even if largely manufactured by the legacy media) though its impact has diminished over the years, though not necessarily for the right reasons. The oft-heard complaint, especially from conservative types, is that ‘obscure’ independent or even foreign films are sometimes favored over movie-movies with broad popular appeal, but some of the most interesting and/or innovative films belong in the category of the Art Film. Therefore, the real problem isn’t the shift in industry attitudes per se but the often stupid ideological reasons behind it. The problem isn’t an independent or foreign film winning the prize but doing so for all the wrong reasons: Not for artistic merit but for its fashionable themes, usually centered around Negrolatry, Homomania, or Holocaustianity.
The Oscars haven’t been merely off but way way off when it comes to artistic merit. Most Best Picture winners have been totally forgotten, having little appeal for cinephiles and nostalgists alike.
If anything, the Academy Awards’ main benefit has been the incentivization of producing something other than commercial fare as, other than profit and glitz, the vanity of respectability has been a key driver in the industry. Among such works, the ones overlooked by the Academy often turn out to be superior to the ones that are nominated/awarded. Still, the very reason for their existence may owe to some studio having banked on them as potential Oscar gold.
The exceptions notwithstanding, most Best Picture winners have been rather lackluster, to say the least. Cineastes never took the Oscars seriously as a benchmark of quality but nevertheless found them useful as a barometer of industry standards, cultural fashions, generational differences, professional recognition, and who’s hot & who’s not. The Cannes Film Festival, more international in scope and ‘auteur’-minded, has been only marginally better in its artistic judgments.
Generally speaking, popular taste, industry biases, and academic/intellectual theories have all conspired against art. The masses go for the lowest common denominator and the industry obsesses over competition & rank, while academic/intellectual types tend to favor fashionable theories(made even stupider by DEI) over aesthetic appreciation. (Why else did all those over-educated idiots elevate JEANNE DIELMAN, the worst film ever made, as the best ever in the Sight and Sounds magazine poll? Such intellectual corruption is proof that Time isn’t always the best judge, though, to be sure, Enough Time will likely dispense with the sick Chantal Akerman cult — incidentally, intellectual corruption may be more dangerous than financial corruption because its lack of material rewards may be mistaken for integrity, a virtue it has no understanding of. Even though JEANNE DIELMAN is 50 yrs old, its apotheosis is an expression of The Current Year, a culmination of the worst delusions of the ‘radical’ critics and academics.) The best criterion for the evaluation of arts & culture is a combination of experience, cultivation of aesthetic sensibility, and basic good sense balancing liberal curiosity with moral compass.
What follows is an attempt to list the Best Film of the Year, beginning in the second half of the 20th century. Why 1950 at the starting point? Several reasons. My knowledge(and interest) in cinema is more extensive in regards to the post-war era. While aware of the many great works from the Silent Era to the end of World War II, my overall knowledge of this period is spotty, partly due to a general lack of enthusiasm for the so-called Classic Hollywood with its factory studio system. Personal filmmaking in the first half of the century was the exception than the rule. Granted, plenty of these Hollywood movies were entertaining enough and would make for fun viewing even today. And, the outstanding works of this period transcended the studio system and earned their positions in the 20th century cultural pantheon.
In Europe, the great era of German cinema ended rather abruptly under National Socialism, not so much due to censorship but the discouragement of bold imagination that had distinguished German cinema from Hollywood that played it safer(with less regard for personal vision). While Mussolini invested heavily in the Film Industry, the Fascist Era in Italy wasn’t a golden age of cinema either. Ironically, contrary to the Western Democratic narrative, the primary reason for the artistic doldrums of National Socialist and Italian Fascist cinema owed to their cultural norms being rather similar to that of Hollywood. Just like in the US, most products were made for mass appeal.
Italy, France, and other countries later became game-changers in cinema precisely because they went against the Hollywood grain: Their encouragement of film-makers as personal artists.
As for Soviet cinema, it started with a bang and continued to produce interesting, even groundbreaking, works, but they were relatively few and far between due to mounting repression and other priorities of the state(that also controlled the film industry); and then came the cataclysmic destruction of World War II.
It was after World War II, especially beginning in the 1950s, that cinema took hold as a personal artform, gaining completion in the 1960s. It was also a time when film, instead of serving as extensions of the established arts, more seriously explored its unique possibilities, which had been the promise of Silent Cinema before the onset of the Talkies that favored conventional storytelling, rendering films more like moveable theater or novels-brought-to-life.
The most original filmmakers of the Silent Era, in the absence of audible dialogue, were free to(and forced to) explore the dynamics of the moving image for its own sake. The modernists, especially in the Sixties, rekindled an interest in cinema for cinema’s sake, using film not as a moving painting, outdoor theatre, or visual novel but an artform with its own mysteries to unravel.
If cinema was the most important medium in the first half of the 20th century(though some may argue for radio), it was the most important artform of the second half of the 20th century. If one were to list the greatest artists of the first half of the 20th Century, the majority would be authors, painters, architects, and musicians, men like William Faulkner, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. There were great film artists to be sure, especially the early Soviets and the Germans(and some French), but cinema mostly triumphed as great entertainment than as serious art.
However, in the second half of the 20th century, filmmakers-as-artists dominated the Zeitgeist, with writers just hanging in there but most others fading into the background, with the exception of musicians of course(especially as Rock music was increasingly taken seriously with the advent of Bob Dylan).
That said, while cinema became the premium artform in the decades following World War II, it lost the stature as the most important medium to Television that was both a threat and a benefit to cinema. A threat for obvious reasons, with more people preferring to stay home than attend the movies. On the other hand, the replays of old movies on TV gave them a second life, inspiring a whole generation of ‘film brats’ who came to appreciate the classics by Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many others.
1950 seems like a good year to begin because it took several years for the world to rebuild from the devastation of World War II. Hollywood was clearly the frontrunner during and in the immediate years after the war as the American homeland was untouched by the ravages that wreaked havoc across Europe, especially Russia and Poland, and of course, Japan, one of the first nations to master the art of cinema. Beginning in the 1950s, one could finally speak of a world film culture, especially with the expanding film festival circuit, which, for instance, made Akira Kurosawa an international sensation with RASHOMON. And, Satyajit Ray was more appreciated abroad than in his Bengali-speaking part of India. And as the boomers(who attended colleges in unprecedented numbers) came into their own, they chose cinema, along with Rock music, as the main vectors of their anxieties and aspirations.
Listed below are the notable films of each year. Those in Bold letters are either great or special in some unique way. Those in Italics are the lesser entries. Finally, the winner(s) of each year is in BOLD CAPITALIZED letters.
1950
All About Eve – Sunset Boulevard – Les Enfants Terribles – In a Lonely Place – Los Olvidados – Rashomon – Stromboli – Winchester 73 – Samson and Delilah – Scandal (Kurosawa)
WINCHESTER 73 was the first in the unlikely but remarkable pairing of Anthony Mann and James Stewart for a series of angst-ridden Westerns. STROMBOLI was an early sign of things to come in the growing affair between European cinema and Hollywood. SAMSON AND DELILAH is great hokum. ALL ABOUT EVE(Oscar winner) and SUNSET BOULEVARD represent the best of Hollywood, crowd-pleasers that are smart and sophisticated. RASHOMON put Japanese cinema on the map as a powerful display of originality. LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES proved Jean Cocteau a better writer than filmmaker, as it took another, Jean-Paul Melville, to do full justice to his ideas on the big screen.
But 1950 belongs to LOS OLVIDADOS by Luis Bunuel, one of the few personal artists and modernists of cinema in the interwar years. His masterpiece is both humanist critique and misanthropic despair, its hardy realism ruptured by moments of surrealism as accession or escape.
1951
Streetcar Named Desire – African Queen – Diary of a Country Priest – Early Summer (Ozu) – Lavender Hill Mob – Miracle in Milan – The River – Strangers on a Train – Summer Interlude
Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando pump iron and flex muscles for a new kind of American cinema, more powerful and direct, with STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. AFRICAN QUEEN is an irresistible ménage of romanticism and realism. SUMMER INTERLUDE earned Ingmar Bergman the attention as a director to watch. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is one of the most entertaining of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies.
The finest films of 1951 are MIRACLE IN MILAN and DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST. Two-way tie.
1952
Forbidden Games – The Golden Coach – High Noon – Ikiru – Life of Oharu – Othello (Welles) – Outcast of the Islands – Quiet Man – Secrets of Women (Bergman) – Singin’ in the Rain – Umberto D – Viva Zapata – White Sheik – Casque D’Or
OTHELLO is lesser Welles but still brilliant. UMBERTO D. was De Sica’s final masterwork as director. Fellini gained instant recognition with his first solo effort, THE WHITE SHEIK. Zinnemann’s HIGH NOON changed the rules of the Western. VIVA ZAPATA may well be the best of Kazan. LIFE OF OHARU is another Mizoguchi masterpiece.
It’s difficult to choose among FORBIDDEN GAMES, IKIRU, and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN as the best of 1952, so call it a three-way tie.
1953
Big Heat – Earrings of Madame de – El – From Here to Eternity(Oscar winner) – Gate of Hell – A Geisha (Mizoguchi) – I Confess – Sawdust and Tinsel, aka Clown’s Evening – Shane – Stalag 17 – Summer with Monika – Tokyo Story – Ugetsu – I Vitelloni – Wages of Fear
Equally adept at personal realism and dream play, Ingmar Bergman’s promise as film master was fulfilled with SUMMER WITH MONIKA and SAWDUST AND TINSEL. SHANE is a beautiful Western. Bunuel further consolidated his bad boy credentials with the devilishly mischievous EL.
The towering works of the year are EARRINGS OF MADAME DE, TOKYO STORY, UGETSU, I VITELLONI, and THE WAGES OF FEAR. A five-way tie.
1954
Story from Chikamatsu – French CanCan – Hobson’s Choice – Johnny Guitar – Voyage in Italy – Late Chrysanthemums – Lesson in Love – On the Waterfront(Oscar winner) – Rear Window – Sansho the Bailiff – Senso – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – Seven Samurai – Star is Born – La Strada – Twenty-Four Eyes – Vera Cruz – Woman of Rumor (Mizoguchi) – Riot in Cell Block 11
David Lean came to be known mostly for his epics, but his mastery was far and wide, operative at any level, as illustrated by HOBSON’S CHOICE. SENSO allowed Luchino Visconti to put aside his Marxist pretensions and luxuriate in aristo-homo fantasies of vanity and opulence. VERA CRUZ is a rousing Western and JOHNNY GUITAR one of the strangest. VOYAGE IN ITALY was a landmark influence on the French New Wave. Mizoguchi made two great ones with STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU and SANSHO THE BAILIFF. TWENTY-FOUR EYES is one of the finest films about teacher-and-students.
1954 belongs to SEVEN SAMURAI, Kurosawa’s crowning achievement and among the greatest films ever.
1955
Les Diaboliques – Dreams (Bergman) – East of Eden – Record of a Living Being – Killer’s Kiss – Kiss Me Deadly – Lola Montes – Man from Laramie – Mr. Arkadin – Night and Fog – The Night of the Hunter – Ordet – Pather Panchali – Rebel without a Cause – Rififi – Smiles of a Summer Night – Taira Clan Saga – Il Bidone – Le Amiche
KILLER’S KISS is Kubrick as fresh hatchling, wobbly on feet but readying for takeoff, soon to come. THE MAN FROM LARAMIE may be the best of Mann-Stewart collaborations. MR. ARKADIN is lesser Welles but work of genius just the same. SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT is perfect Bergman, perhaps too perfect. PATHER PANCHALI is among the finest works in the humanist vein. TAIRA CLAN SAGA is Mizoguchi’s penultimate work and a great historical epic. NIGHT AND FOG, Resnais’ dirge on the Holocaust, foreshadow further experimentations in his fiction films.
A tie. LES DIABOLIQUES by Henri-Georges Clouzot and ORDET by Carl Dreyer win for 1955.
1956
Aparajito – Bigger than Life – Bob le Flambeur – Burmese Harp – Death in the Garden – Early Spring – Elena and Her Men – Gervaise – Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jubal – Kanal – The Killing (Kubrick) – A Man Escaped – Man Who Knew Too Much – Moby Dick – The Searchers – Someone Up There Likes Me – Ten Commandments – The Wrong Man – Thick-Walled Room (Kobayashi) – I Will Buy You (Kobayashi) – Street of Shame – Attack (Aldrich)
Paul Newman was fated for stardom with SOMEONE UP THERE LIKES ME. Cecil DeMille’s TEN COMMANDMENTS is surely ridiculous but undeniably spectacular. BURMESE HARP is the most poetic of the antiwar films. Bunuel’s touch is indelible even in the ‘conventional’ narrative of DEATH IN THE GARDEN. Wajda’s KANAL is a harrowing account of Polish Resistance’s doomed heroics. APARAJITO furthers the Apu saga. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is one of the greatest B-films, also one of the most original. THE SEARCHERS may be John Ford’s greatest western.
BIGGER THAN LIFE(Nicolas Ray), THE KILLING(Stanley Kubrick), and A MAN ESCAPED(Robert Bresson) stand out in 1956. For its depth and spiritual/philosophical qualities, one might tip in favor of Bresson’s film, but we’ll settle for a three-way tie.
1957
3:10 to Yuma – An Affair to Remember – And Quiet Flows the Don – The Bridge on the River Kwai (Oscar winner) – Cranes Are Flying – Decision at Sundown – A Face in the Crowd – Nights of Cabiria – Paths of Glory – Seventh Seal – Sweet Smell of Success – Throne of Blood – White Nights – Il Grido – 7 Men From Now – Black River (Kobayashi) – Oedipus Rex (Guthrie)
CRANES ARE FLYING was over-praised in its time as evidence of Soviet thaw under Khrushchev, a film of personal expression as well as social consciousness. It still retains much of its power. AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON, though a conventional work of social realism, was realized on an impressive scale with richness of detail. Giulietta Masina isn’t quite convincing as a prostitute, but if bitter-sweet was done to perfection, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA is it. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI was a mixed blessing for Lean. He demonstrated his abilities as an epic director but also got addicted to scale. Kurosawa is the lord of the elements in THRONE OF BLOOD. THE SEVENTH SEAL is Bergman’s artful tapestry of tragedy and comedy. 3:10 TO YUMA is a perfectly executed Western.
The most devastating drama, as well as a perversely delightful game theory, is Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY, the winner for 1957.
1958
Ashes and Diamonds – Ballad of Narayama (Kinoshita) – The Big Country – Big Deal on Madonna Street – Bonjour Tristesse – Brink of Life – Elevator to the Gallows – Equinox Flower – Hidden Fortress – Ivan the Terrible Pt 2 – Music Room – The Last Hurrah – The Left Handed Gun – The Lovers – The Magician – Mon Oncle – Some Came Running – Touch of Evil – Vertigo – Young Lions – Eroica (Poland)
ASHES AND DIAMONDS, though sworn by some as one of the greatest films ever, is far from Wajda’s best. It was the right film for the right time, just barely acceptable under communism against which it surreptitiously railed. BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET is a comedy caper hanging onto the last strands of humanism. BONJOUR TRISTESSE is a gem, after which Preminger embarked on productions of scale, often misguided and bloated. In retrospect, MON ONCLE can be appreciated as a trial balloon for Tati’s masterpiece to come.
The two greatest films of 1958 are TOUCH OF EVIL and VERTIGO, a tie. Neither was properly appreciated upon release, partly due to the false dichotomy of Hollywood vs. Art Film. While it’s foolish to conflate art with entertainment, it’s no less so to insist a work has to belong to one camp or the other. Welles and Hitchcock’s films, by exploring the indeterminate boundaries between truth and myth, nudged critics and scholars to rethink the relations between art and entertainment.
1959
The 400 Blows – Anatomy of a Murder – Ballad of a Soldier – Ben-Hur (Oscar winner) – Les Cousins – Day of the Outlaw – Fires on the Plain – Floating Weeds – Il Generale della Rovere – Good Morning(Ohayo) – Hiroshima Mon Amour – The Horse Soldiers – Human Condition I & II – I’m All Right Jack – Imitation of Life – Kapo – Nazarin – North by Northwest – Key(Odd Obsession) – Our Man in Havana – Pickpocket – Pork Chop Hill – Ride Lonesome – Rio Bravo – Shadows – Some Like It Hot – Warlock – The World of Apu
RIDE LONESOME is the finest of the Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott partnerships. De Toth’s Western DAY OF THE OUTLAW has been highly influential as claustrophobic psycho-drama. IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE brought out the best in De Sica as actor and Rossellini as director. Bunuel being Bunuel, NAZARIN is a tragedy with comic undercurrents. The film despairs of but also takes delight in the travails of the hero, as much a fool as a saint, but is there a difference between the two? FIRES ON THE PLAIN is the other great antiwar film by Kon Ichikawa, perhaps the bleakest and most harrowing within that vein; it might have inspired Romero’s zombie movie. Yasujiro Ozu had two winners with FLOATING WEEDS, a perfect(ed) remake of his earlier film, and OHAYO, one of the best films about children. Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol fired the first salvos of the French New Wave with THE 400 BLOWS and LES COUSINS. BEN-HUR has a sagging middle but has rarely been equaled as spectacle.
We have a tie: HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, which pushed montage toward psychological depths, and KAPO, still the best film about the World War II concentration camp experience.
1960
Apartment (Oscar winner) – L’Avventura – Bad Sleep Well – Breathless – Cruel Story of Youth – Devi – La Dolce Vita – Devil’s Eye – Elmer Gantry – The Entertainer – Exodus – Eyes Without a Face – A False Student (Masumura) – Le Trou – Late Autumn – Peeping Tom – Psycho – Purple Noon – Rocco and His Brothers – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Shoot the Piano Player – Spartacus – Virgin Spring – Village of the Damned – When a Woman Ascends the Stairs – The Young One
SPARTACUS might have been the greatest of all epics if Kubrick had gotten his way. The unnerving VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is minor but effective. SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER embodied the anarcho-romanticism of the New Wave. PURPLE NOON is mostly looks but what looks. WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS is one of Naruse’s best. LA DOLCE VITA, the most celebrated film of the year, loves what it disdains, decadence, and hasn’t aged particularly well. BAD SLEEP WELL is Kurosawa’s powerful statement on institutional corruption, somewhat marred by melodrama and implausible plot twists; a clear influence on Coppola. ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is perhaps too grandiose for a story about the underclass. EYES WITHOUT A FACE is that very rare thing, elegant horror. Godard’s landmark BREATHLESS was something of a miracle: One of the most radical films that proved to be immensely popular. PSYCHO, at once classic and innovative, kept Hitchcock in the game in the rapidly changing cinema landscape.
1960 belongs to L’AVVENTURA that was as revolutionary as anything from the French New Wave but with maturity and depth generally lacking among the Cahiers du Cinema crowd.
1961
Accattone – Bandits of Orgosolo – Blast of Silence – Breakfast at Tiffany’s – El Cid – End of Summer – Human Condition III – The Innocents (Clayton) – The Last Year at Marienbad – Leon Morin, Priest – Lola – La Notte – One-Eyed Jacks – Paris Belongs to Us – Pigs and Battleships – Il Posto – Raisin in the Sun – Through a Glass Darkly – Viridiana – West Side Story (Oscar winner) – Yojimbo
RAISIN IN THE SUN isn’t much but features wonderful acting. PARIS BELONGS TO US introduced Jacques Rivette as the most challenging of New Wave directors. WEST SIDE STORY is uneven, usually stale between the musical numbers, but what fabulous numbers. Ermano Olmi’s IL POSTO eschews strident social consciousness and overt emotionalism in favor of a patient and amused study of a young aspirant on the lowest rung of the middle class. ACCATTONE is a raw and unfiltered depiction of Rome’s underbelly, an abrasive look at bareknuckle reality indifferent to notions of social reform and spiritual elevation. BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S is Hollywood out east and at its best, Blake Edward’s one truly great work. Mann and Heston succeeded with EL CID where Kubrick and Douglas didn’t quite with SPARTACUS — better to be joined at the hip than tangled in limbs. THE LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD pushed Resnais’ experimentalism even further, but to what end? Bunuel’s psychosexual satire of Catholicism in VIRIDIANA was a remnant of a fading culture war when the Church still held sway but was fast losing its grip. It’s like well-preserved wine in an old bottle. PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS is sheer brilliance from Shohei Imamura, a mahjong game of crime caper, comedy, and socio-political commentary.
The greatest film of the year is the third and final part of Kobayashi’s HUMAN CONDITION saga. With German cinema in the doldrums until the 1970s, Japan(and Italy) took the lead in depicting the war from the Axis perspective.
1962
Advise & Consent – An Autumn Afternoon – Billy Budd – Birdman of Alcatraz – Cleo from 5 to 7 – Le Combat dans l’île – Le Doulos – Easy Life (Il Sorpasso) – Electra – Exterminating Angel – Harakiri (Seppuku) – Ivan’s Childhood – La Jetee – Jules and Jim – Knife in the Water – Lawrence of Arabia (Oscar winner) – Lolita – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Long Day’s Journey into Night – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – The Manchurian Candidate – The Miracle Worker – My Life to Live – Pitfall – Ride the High Country – Sanjuro – Tale of Zatoichi – The Trial – Salvatore Giuliano – L’Eclisse – Being Two Isn’t Easy
Tarkovsky’s IVAN’S CHILDHOOD captured the drudgery of war through the dreamy eyes of a child. Rosi’s SALVATORE GIULIANO is the closest thing to a secular Christ narrative. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE is John Ford’s last movie of note, a reconsideration(if not exactly a deconstruction) of the genre plagued with doubt and regret. Irene Papas is electrifying in ELECTRA. Peckinpah staked his claim with RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY as the leading contender of the New Western. TALE OF ZATOICHI was the first installment in one of the most impressive series in movie history. EASY LIFE offers wine and food for thought. Bunuel kept fighting the old fight, with the bourgeoisie once again in his crosshairs, but also outpacing the younger ‘auteurs’ in daring and subversion. KNIFE IN THE WATER is a collaboration between Polanski and Skolimowski, two key figures of ‘New Wave’ Polish cinema who would mostly work in ‘exile’ in years to come. THE MIRACLE WORKER is exhausting and exhilarating, a psychological and physical battle of body and soul. PITFALL was the first partnership between Kobo Abe and Hiroshi Teshigahara, one of the most fertile and complementary in cinema. LE COMBAT DANS l’ILE is an edgy political thriller with Jean-Louis Tritignant taking on a villainous but cool persona(like Tom Cruise later in COLLATERAL). THE TRIAL is Welles’ most experimental work, closest on par with European avant garde sensibilities of the time.
Some people believe 1962 to have been the best year for film, and there’s even a book on the subject. It’s understandable why. How does one choose among HARAKIRI, LA JETEE, JULES AND JIM, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA? All are deserving of equal honors. A five-way tie.
1963
8 ½ – An Actor’s Revenge – America, America – Bay of Angels – The Big City – The Birds – Les Carabiniers – Cleopatra – The Fiances (Olmi) – The Fire Within – Hands over the City – High and Low – Hud – Insect Women – Kanto Wanderer – The Leopard – Le Petit Soldat – Muriel – The Organizer – The Servant – The Silence(Bergman) – The Ugly American – Winter Light – Youth of the Beast
Kazan embarked on something new with AMERICA, AMERICA, which shoots for authenticity but misses half the time. CLEOPATRA sinks as drama but soars as spectacle. Kon Ichikawa’s brilliance is on full display in AN ACTOR’S REVENGE. Imamura’s INSECT WOMEN is an unadulterated gaze into the world of disreputable women, a strange mix of the immediate and the opaque. Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW is a continuance of his approach and concerns but in a dialectic with the changing fashions in cinema.
The most obvious pick for 1963 would be Fellini’s magnum opus, 8½, an obligatory mention in any list of the greatest films. But no less great are THE LEOPARD by Visconti and MURIEL by Resnais, which makes it a three-way tie.
1964
A Band of Outsiders – Becket – Before the Revolution – Black Peter – Charulata – Diamonds of the Night – Diary of a Chambermaid – Dr. Strangelove – The Fall of the Roman Empire – A Fistful of Dollars – Gate of Flesh – Gertrud – Gospel According to St. Matthew – Hamlet (USSR) – A Hard Day’s Night – I Am Cuba – Intentions of Murder – Kwaidan – Marnie – Onibaba – Pale Flower – Seven Days in May – The Soft Skin – Three Outlaw Samurai – The Train – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Woman in the Dunes – Zorba the Greek – Zulu
Pasolini’s GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW is still the best film about Jesus. Imamura’s approach in INTENTIONS OF MURDER is like amoral empathy, essential in understanding the twisted lives in the film. KWAIDAN comprises four segments, of which “Hoichi the Earless” is among the greatest in cinema.
We have a tie. Two most outstanding works of the year are DR. STRANGELOVE, political satire peering into the abyss of misanthropic nihilism, and WOMAN IN THE DUNES, a profound rumination on the troublesome foundation — human nature and animal drives — of seemingly irreversible but all too facile modernity.
1965
Alphaville – Le Bonheur – Bunny Lake Is Missing – Darling – Doctor Zhivago – Fists in the Pocket – Flight of the Phoenix – For a Few Dollars More – The Ipcress File – Lord Jim – Loves of a Blonde – Major Dundee – Man Is Not a Bird – Pierrot Le Fou – Red Beard – Repulsion – Samurai Spy – The Saragossa Manuscript – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors – The Shop on Main Street – Simon of the Desert – Sword of the Beast – Tattooed Life – Tokyo Olympiad – Von Ryan’s Express – Fugitive from the Past – Hoodlum Soldier (Masumura) – Story of a Prostitute (Suzuki)
Godard infused his sci-fi outing ALPHAVILLE with poetic irony. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO won the hearts of moviegoers but not the minds of critics, and time has stood with the moviegoers. FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX is a mechanical marvel as narrative, a suspense-filled battle of wits and will. TOKYO OLYMPIAD is, along with Riefenstahl’s landmark films, among the very best sports documentaries. SIMON OF THE DESERT was another amazing work by Bunuel. Most directors, even the most radical or innovative, eventually show their age, i.e. what made them original in their time later seems repetitive and passé. Not with Bunuel, whose short film was ahead of the curve of its contemporaries. IPCRESS FILE was a welcome alternative to the comic-book formulation of 007. RED BEARD, a didactic slower-paced Kurosawa film, is ultimately rewarding to any viewer with the requisite patience. Peter O’Toole’s shadowy charisma was once against used to great effect in LORD JIM. Polanski’s REPULSION is lurid but sensational film-making. FUGITIVE FROM THE PAST ranks among the greatest crime films. SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS combines rustic folklore and avant-garde dynamism.
1965 doesn’t have a clear winner, but one might go with FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, if only because Sergio Leone’s place in the film firmament was most unlikely, especially given the ridiculous notion of the ‘Spaghetti Western’. Of course, it wasn’t the idea per se as virtually all his imitators paled in comparison or proved worthless. Only he(along with Ennio Morricone) could turn a fool’s gold of an idea into the real gold of what came to be known as the Dollars Trilogy. Despite the international success of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, it was with the second film that Leone proved his absolute mastery as stylist and true visionary.
1966
Andrei Rublev – Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson) – The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo) – Blowup – Chimes at Midnight, aka Falstaff (Welles) – Closely Watched Trains – Face of Another (Teshigahara) – Fahrenheit 451 – Fighting Elegy – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone) – The Group – Hawaii – The Hawks and the Sparrows – Here Is Your Life (Troell) – Hunger (Sult) – The Hunt (La Caza) – Masculine-Feminine – The Nun – Persona (Bergman) – Pornographers – The Professionals – The Round-Up – The Sand Pebbles – Sword of Doom – Tokyo Drifter – La Guerre est Finie – Gambit – Father (Szabo) – Red Angel (Japan) – Carmen from Kawachi
We’re in trouble. Tarkovsky’s masterpiece seems the obvious choice for 1966, but hardly less remarkable are the works of Bresson, Pontecorvo, Welles, Teshigahara, Leone, Troell, and Bergman. PERSONA is peak Bergman. THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY is the craziest idea for a Western, all over the map but fully mapped. One is hard-pressed to think of a coming-of-age film as rich as HERE IS YOUR LIFE, unsparing in its details of life’s challenges yet ameliorated by the reveries of youth. FACE OF ANOTHER is a multi-layered category-defying exegesis on identity and modernity. THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is riveting throughout, its heart leaning one way but its head seeing both sides. These are all very great films.
The two titles that come closest to matching the greatness of ANDREI RUBLEV are AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, a depressing tale made even sadder by unrequited grace, and CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, surely the greatest of all Shakespeare adaptations. So, it’s a three-way tie.
1967
Two or Three Things I Know about Her – Accident – Bedazzled – Belle de Jour – Bonnie and Clyde – Branded to Kill – China Is Near – Colt Is My Passport – Cool Hand Luke – Elvira Madigan – Far from the Madding Crowd – The Fireman’s Ball – The Graduate – Hombre – In Cold Blood – In the Heat of the Night (Oscar winner) – Marketa Lazarova – Mouchette – Playtime – Point Blank – The President’s Analyst – The Red and the White – Le Samourai – Samurai Rebellion – The Stranger (Visconti) – Two for the Road – War and Peace (USSR) – Weekend – The Young Girls of Rochefort – Japan’s Longest Day
1967 was hailed as a banner year for American cinema, a turning point when Hollywood cast off once and for all the strictures of Old Hollywood. In the spirit of younger-than-yesterday, the biggest film of the year was THE GRADUATE that simultaneously embodied creative maturation and the spirit of youth. Over the years, some have dismissed it as ‘clever’, but no amount of cleverness, even by Nichols himself, has been able to replicate its alchemy. Across the Atlantic, CHINA IS NEAR amusedly but nervously observed the phenomenon of privileged youth playing at fashionable radicalism like children with firecrackers. COOL HAND LUKE has been overlooked by critics who never regarded Stuart Rosenberg as an ‘auteur’, but a homerun is still a homerun regardless of who hits it. LE SAMOURAI is all style but great style. If shallowness could be art, this is it. JAPAN’S LONGEST DAY is compelling historical drama, among the best of its kind. IN COLD BLOOD rarely hits a false note as a portrait of men doomed to crime and punishment by genes, biography, or a set of circumstances. MOUCHETTE is another masterwork by Bresson.
The most singular achievements of the year are MARKETA LAZAROVA, often considered the greatest Czech film, THE RED AND THE WHITE, Jancso’s meditation on the Hungarian Civil War, and Jacques Tati’s PLAYTIME, the most elaborate toy set ever made. A three-way tie.
1968
2001: A Space Odyssey – Planet of the Apes – Petulia – Rosemary’s Baby – Night of the Living Dead – Once Upon a Time in the West – Monterey Pop – If… – Les Biches – La Femme Infidele – Affair in the Snow (Japan) – Nanami, Inferno of First Love – Kill! (Kiru) – Profound Desire of the Gods – Valley of the Bees – Man without a Map (Teshigahara) – Dita Saxova – Toby Dammit (from The Spirits of the Dead) – Faces (Cassavetes)
The three great visionary films of 1968 were the science fiction epic by Kubrick, the Western epic by Leone, and the anthropological epic by Imamura. Amazingly, Leone, who had turned a ridiculous idea, the Italian Western, into great entertainment, inverted it once again to construct an art film. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST pushes the genre, twice-transformed in Leone’s hands, to the limits of its imaginative potential. Leone intuited the mythic implications of the American West. Unlike in ancient myths where gods commanded the magic while mortal heroes struggled with swords, the gun imbued mankind with godlike power. An effortless pull of the trigger and death rang out. And whereas deeply entrenched institutions monopolized violence within the heart of civilization(of Europe and the American East), men could, godlike, forge their own ‘laws’ in the Wild West. If the overt moralism of the American Western maintained the genre at the level of folklore, the nihilism of Leone unloosed the imagination for men to play gods. PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS also works at the level of myth but then as comedy, tragedy, and anthropology as well. It’s part satire but much more and, like Leone and Kubrick’s works, pushes imagination to its absolute limit. In terms of insight and ingenuity, it is the most amazing film of the year.
Still, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, for its imaginative leap and technical feats, edges out the other two as The Film of the Year.
1969
Midnight Cowboy (Oscar winner) – The Wild Bunch – Take the Money and Run – Medium Cool – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Alfred the Great – Kes – Army of Shadows – The Milky Way – Mississippi Mermaid – My Night at Maud’s – Z – Double Suicide – Boy (Oshima) – Eros Plus Massacre – Color of Pomegranates – Phantom India – Une Femme Douce – This Man Must Die
PHANTOM INDIA is Malle’s greatest achievement, a peerless documentary of deep curiosity and sharp critique. EROS PLUS MASSACRE remains one of the most challenging, even somewhat vexing, pieces of avant-garde cinema. MIDNIGHT COWBOY is one of those rare Oscar winners that could indeed be construed as the best of the year. COLOR OF POMEGRANATES was once again Parajanov’s veneration of heritage with a modernist twist. ARMY OF SHADOWS is Melville’s finest work, in which a faction of the French Resistance is presented as a brotherhood of underworld saints. Any of these films is a worthy contender for the best of the year.
THE WILD BUNCH by Sam Peckinpah just barely edges them out.
1970
M*A*S*H – Patton – Zabriskie Point – Le Boucher – The Ballad of Cable Hogue – Woodstock – The Confession (Gavras) – The People Next Door – Deep End – Five Easy Pieces – Crime and Punishment (USSR) – The Conformist – Ryan’s Daughter – Gimme Shelter – Husbands – Love Story – Little Big Man – The Go-Between – Tristana – The Wild Child – Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo – Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Truffaut’s THE WILD CHILD dwelt on themes of civilization and savagery at a time when French radicals were still high on the fumes of May 68. It’s a worthy counterpoint to Godard’s WEEKEND released prior to that pivotal event. Whatever one thinks of Woodstock the happening, WOODSTOCK the film is fascinating and informative on many levels, as Rock concert film, social documentary, generational mythmaking(and myth-busting), and political propaganda. INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION is nervy satire about the ‘fascism’ inherent in the system. Agree or disagree, it’s a brilliant case study of the psychology of power.
Cassavetes’ HUSBANDS is the winner of 1970 for its hard-nosed and thumb-your-nose take on the middle class midlife crisis.
1971
Punishment Park – Emigrants – Get Carter – THX 1138 – Wake in Fright – Escape from the Planet of the Apes – The Ceremony (Oshima) – McCabe & Mrs. Miller – The Hellstrom Chronicle – Carnal Knowledge – Sunday Bloody Sunday – Two-Lane Blacktop – The Hired Hand – And Now for Something Completely Different – The French Connection (Oscar winner) – The Last Picture Show – Duck, You Sucker – Fiddler on the Roof – Nicholas and Alexandra – Sometimes a Great Notion – A Clockwork Orange – Harold and Maude – Macbeth – Dirty Harry – Straw Dogs – Murmur of the Heart – Out 1 – The Sorrow and the Pity – Two English Girls – Silence (Shinoda) – King Lear (USSR)
1971 was quite a year with New Hollywood having completed the process that accelerated in earnest since the mid-Sixties. No longer content as the entertainment capital of the world, it was to be the hotbed of personal filmmaking. THX 1138, Lucas’ first feature film, will always be his finest. THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE is almost sci-fi in its probing into the alien world of insects. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF is a first-rate musical with great numbers, and rather insightful about Jewish Tradition being the ironic source of rumble-tumble restiveness. Polanski’s MACBETH is among the best Shakespeare adaptations. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is Bogdanovich’s only great film, but as Welles once said to him, “It only takes one.” A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and STRAW DOGS were rightfully recognized as masterworks of New Violence but understandably excoriated(in some corners) for crossing boundaries that maybe shouldn’t have been crossed. DUCK, YOU SUCKER begins as comedy and ends as tragedy, running the full gamut of just about every notion ever written and every emotion ever felt. It shouldn’t work at all but does so amazingly. GET CARTER is a nasty piece of work, a class-bait gangster drama, that hurls forth like an asteroid hellbent on impact. THE FRENCH CONNECTION struck gold with its perfect partnership of genre thrills and new realism, satisfying both action aficionados and the art film crowd. MCCABE & MRS. MILLER is at once the most realistic and the most romantic Western, the dreary and the dreamy of the frontier experience rolled into one. It’s also Altman’s finest work. HAROLD AND MAUDE remains the quintessential cult film, one that spawned many others, not necessarily a good thing.
All said and done, EMIGRANTS by Jan Troell wins as the richest work of the year.
1972
The New Land – The Godfather – Slaughterhouse-Five – The Assassination of Trotsky – Conquest of the Planet of the Apes – Deliverance – The Ruling Class – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Solaris – Last Tango in Paris – Ulzana’s Raid – Sisters – The Getaway – The Heartbreak Kid – Jeremiah Johnson – Frenzy – Aguirre the Wrath of God – The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty – Cries and Whispers – State of Siege
This should be easy, but there is THE NEW LAND, deserving of equal recognition with THE GODFATHER. So, we have a tie. .
1973
The Long Goodbye – Ludwig – The Day of the Jackal – Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid – American Graffiti – Enter the Dragon – Mean Streets – Badlands – The Paper Chase – The Wicker Man – The Last Detail – Papillon – Sleeper – Amarcord – The Day of the Dolphin – The Exorcist – The Mother and the Whore – Wedding in Blood – Wanderers(Ichikawa) – Ali: Fear Eats the Soul – The Iceman Cometh – Love and Anarchy – Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray) – Scenes from a Marriage
The production of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID was beset with endless problems, resulting in something like a mangled masterpiece. THE EXORCIST makes no sense but is awesome filmmaking. Top-notch writing, directing, and acting make THE LAST DETAIL memorable as a road movie on the illusion of freedom. BADLANDS is a sobering study of the romantic outlaw myth.
Even above those great titles is MEAN STREETS, the first indication of Scorsese’s potential to be the greatest director of his generation.
1974
Zardoz – The Sugarland Express – The Conversation – Claudine – Stavisky – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot – The Parallax View – Chinatown – The Taking of Pelham One Two Three – A Woman under the Influence – The Phantom of Liberty – F for Fake – The Godfather Part II – Hearts and Minds – Swept Away – Celine and Julie Go Boating – The Clockmaker – Lacombe Lucien – Lancelot du Lac – Sweet Movie – Castle of Sand – Sandakan No. 8 – Electra, My Love – Kaseki, aka Fossil – Bread and Chocolate (Italy)
ELECTRA, MY LOVE exulted in the boldest filmmaking of 1974. Welles played film like a fiddle in F FOR FAKE. If any film can be deemed thoughtful and civilized in the best bourgeois sense, it’s Kobayashi’s KASEKI. Bresson’s LANCELOT DU LAC is filmed poetry. ZARDOZ is a crazy but profound statement on man, nature, and civilization, especially prescient in light of what was to befall the West.
The two titans of the year are CHINATOWN and THE GODFATHER PART II, and the latter wins for its sheer breadth and scope.
1975
Mirror (Tarkovsky) – The Passenger – Monty Python and the Holy Grail – Seven Beauties – French Connection II – Love and Death – Nashville – Night Moves – Jaws – Cooley High – Dersu Uzala – Picnic at Hanging Park – Dog Day Afternoon – Three Days of the Condor – Hard Times – One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Oscar winner) – Barry Lyndon – The Man Who Would be King – The Killer Elite – The Story of Adele H. – The Middleman (Satyajit Ray) – The Man Who Skied Down Everest
COOLEY HIGH may still be the best film on the black youth experience. Though sold as blaxploitation AMERICAN GRAFFITI, it’s actually better. JAWS is proof that genius can turn anything into anything. Spielberg probably could turn a rubber ducky into an object of worship. Lina Wertmuller emptied her fuel tank in the making of SEVEN BEAUTIES, her greatest work. Everything that followed was second-rate. NASHVILLE is Altman’s other great work, maybe the best American movie satire of the decade(and far superior to the overrated NETWORK). DERSU UZALA is Kurosawa’s somber meditation on man and nature, a work of rugged poetry and pathos. DOG DAY AFTERNOON is one of the best New York Movies, Lumet’s first claim to greatness. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST is Forman at the top of his game, playing moods like cards.
The absolute masterpiece of 1975 is of course BARRY LYNDON, Kubrick’s second greatest work.
1976
Taxi Driver – Grey Gardens – The Bad News Bears – All the President’s Men – The Missouri Breaks – The Tenant – The Big Bus – Harlan County, USA – Car Wash – Carrie – Rocky (Oscar winner) – Black and White in Color – The Innocent (Visconti) – The Judge and the Assassin – The Marquis of O – Monsieur Klein – Kings of the Road (Wenders) – Lullaby of the Earth – Pink Panther Strikes Again – Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000
ROCKY won Best Picture Oscar for obvious reasons, but Stallone’s pitch had been anything but a sure bet. His combination of gutter realism and fairy tale elements was one of those movie miracles, its success a real-life Cinderella story. It still resonates after all these years and remains Stallone’s one true moment of glory. THE BIG BUS and PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN are great fun, and THE BAD NEWS BEARS(a spiritual cousin of ROCKY) and CARWASH(a watered down variation of M*A*S*H and NASHVILLE) defined the era. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN is historically BS but superbly effective as political propaganda. Polanski went Kafkaesque with the psychological horror, THE TENANT, possibly his most personal film. HARLAN COUNTRY, USA is the kind of social documentary we hardly see anymore, a prime example of direct cinema. The last third of CARRIE, the Bicentennial nightmare, made De Palma’s reputation. The little known LULLABY OF THE EARTH by Yasuzo Masumura is a shattering tale of condemned innocence.
The obvious choice for 1976 would be TAXI DRIVER, widely considered as Scorsese’s first masterpiece, but an even greater film is Bertrand Tavernier’s THE JUDGE AND THE ASSASSIN.
1977
Providence (Resnais) – Eraserhead – Demon Seed – Rabid – Cross of Iron – Star Wars – Sorcerer – That Obscure Object of Desire – Soldier of Orange – Close Encounters of the Third Kind – The Last Wave – Saturday Night Fever – The Devil Probably – Padre Padrone – Man of Marble – The Ascent (USSR) – A Special Day (Italy)
In SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, John Travolta followed in Sylvester Stallone’s footsteps as the next big Italian-American hunk. It did for the disco dance floor what ROCKY did for the boxing ring. Resnais continued in his experimental vein with time and memory in PROVIDENCE. Long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, STAR WARS was an overnight sensation and became an all-time phenomenon. Its first 10 minutes still rank among the most jaw-dropping in cinema. Though full of movie magic, it wasn’t exactly magical, for which one had to turn to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, the rare fairy tale for adults. Bresson’s THE DEVIL PROBABLY is his most bitter and dispiriting work, a vision of a world so robbed of meaning that there’s no room even for despair. How MAN OF MARBLE, an investigation into Polish communist myths, got made within the repressive system would make a fascinating story in its own right. THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE, Bunuel’s final film, shows little of his anarchic spirit diminished even in old age. Perhaps, nothing preserves youth better than anarchism, though it must be said Bunuel was never particularly youthful or mature, neither bitter with radical rage nor wise in years, just cynical with a tireless sense of humor, aloof of the shenanigans of both the left and the right. THE ASCENT, a Soviet film set during the German invasion of Russia is a Christian parable and a poetic masterpiece.
The most far-out film of 1977 was ERASERHEAD by David Lynch. It may sound strange to mention Lynch in the same breath as Stallone and Lucas, but all three, who would loom large in the decades to come, got their start with a dogged insistence on pursuing their visions against all naysayers and all odds. In this sense. ERASERHEAD was Lynch’s THE FOUNTAINHEAD.
1978
Blue Collar – Coming Home – The Serpent’s Egg – An Unmarried Women – Straight Time – Pretty Baby – Dawn of the Dead – I Wanna Hold Your Hand – The Last Waltz – Martin – The Driver – The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith – Heaven Can Wait – Who’ll Stop the Rain – Days of Heaven – Autumn Sonata – Halloween – Killer of Sheep – The Deer Hunter (Oscar winner)- Oliver’s Story – Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Empire of Passion – Phoenix (Ichikawa) – Tree of the Wooden Clogs
THE DEER HUNTER is one of those movies. Undeniably effective in certain respects, bloody stupid in others. Ingmar Bergman’s THE SERPENT’S EGG is strained but a fascinating glimpse into the sick soul of Weimar Germany that begat National Socialism. It would make an interesting double-bill with CABARET. Ingmar and Ingrid collaborated in AUTUMN SONATA, a kind of a gimmick project but nicely done. AN UNMARRIED WOMAN was very much the talk of the town, a ‘serious’ and ‘candid’ exploration of the challenges facing the New Woman, just as KRAMER VS KRAMER of the following year was a ‘searing’ look at the Modern Man confronted with the problems of the New Woman. DAWN OF THE DEAD is Romero’s flesh-eating zombie reboot with more action and gore. It’s great trash. I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND is Zemeckis’ debut, still his most heartfelt and entertaining work. Warren Beatty got some flak for making the lightweight HEAVEN CAN WAIT, but its beautifully poignant ending, one of Beatty’s finest moments, transcends the material. Its idea of entering another man’s body is what movies are all about, roleplaying by actors, with which the audience vicariously participate. THE LAST WALTZ is one of the best Rock concert films. TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS is a big film about little people done with careful observation and simple dignity. STRAIGHT TIME is a first-rate crime drama though Hoffman isn’t entirely convincing as a seedy small-time hood. For many, John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN was the greatest thrill since Spielberg’s JAWS. PHOENIX by Ichikawa is about the zaniest movie ever made, something Gilliam could learn from. Kaufman’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is the rare remake that equals, even surpasses, the original. THE CHANT OF JIMMY BLACKSMITH is a bitter pill, an almost unbearable but essential film about the clash of cultures in the Australian colonization experience.
DAYS OF HEAVEN by Terrence Malick navigates between the rapid streams of the American experience and the deeper currents of timeless truths. It is the most extraordinary film of the year.
1979
Hair – The China Syndrome – Manhattan – Last Embrace – Alien – Escape from Alcatraz – Breaking Away – The Wanderers (Kaufman) – Apocalypse Now – Monty Python’s Life of Brian – My Brilliant Career – The Onion Field – Heartland – Wise Blood – Siberiade – 10 – The Black Stallion – Chilly Scenes of Winter – The Great Santini – Tess – Being There – Kramer vs Kramer (Oscar winner) – All That Jazz – The Tin Drum – The Castle of Cagliostro – Vengeance Is Mine – Stalker – Marriage of Maria Braun – Christ Stopped at Eboli – The Warriors.
Milos Forman’s HAIR is about equally rapturous and repulsive. THE CHINA SYNDROME is one of the last and the most popular of the Cinema of Paranoia. The obsessive LAST EMBRACE overwhelmed Demme, a master of whimsy, but fascinates with its dark material, the kind Mamet would later explore with better results. THE BLACK STALLION captivated children and parents alike. TIN DRUM is a clunky but lively adaptation of the Gunter Grass novel. ALL THAT JAZZ has snap, crackle, and pop but is overdone with in-your-face direction. Too many accents and exclamation points, with every shot and edit flashing like neon. James Woods is the main reason for watching THE ONION FIELD. That monsters can have admirable and even redeeming qualities makes it all the more unsettling because, all said and done, behavior can be reformed but not the soul. THE WARRIORS is fabulous trash. THE WANDERERS is the best thing Kaufman ever did. It’s an epic of youth, much like THE RIGHT STUFF would be the epic of men. TESS demonstrated Polanski’s beguiling mastery in any genre or form. VENGEANCE IS MINE is difficult viewing given its almost unbearable intimacy with the murderer, but then, who wants an easy-viewing film about a serial killer? It ranks with IN COLD BLOOD as one of the best of its kind. The first hour of APOCALYPSE NOW is among the absolute greatest in cinema, for which alone the film deserves its place in the pantheon. The ending, as everyone with sense knows, is just awful.
1979 comes down to STALKER by Andrei Tarkovsky and SIBERIADE by Andrei Konchalovsky. Two men had collaborated on ANDREI RUBLEV and some thirteen years later achieved incomparable greatness on their own. Tarkovsky’s work is as introverted as Konchalovsky’s work is extroverted, but both powerfully convey this thing called the ‘Russian soul’. Call it a tie.
1980
Airplane! – Atlantic City – Berlin Alexanderplatz – The Big Red One – The Blues Brothers – Breaker Morant – Coal Miner’s Daughter – Cruising – Dressed to Kill – Elephant Man – Empire Strikes Back – Heaven’s Gate – Kagemusha – The Long Good Friday – The Long Riders – Melvin and Howard – Mon Oncle d’Amérique – My Bodyguard – Ordinary People (Oscar winner) – Out of the Blue – Raging Bull – Return of the Secaucus 7 – The Shining – Stardust Memories – Superman II – That Sinking Feeling – Urban Cowboy – Used Cars – Zigeunerweisen – Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears – Gloria – Pixote – Horse of Pride (Chabrol)
CRUISING is nothing if not transgressive but not transgressive enough. You can’t go halfway if you’re gonna take it up the arse. THE BLUES BROTHERS sinks under its own weight but has some big laughs. ELEPHANT MAN is Lynch going mainstream with mixed results. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK culminates in a fantastic duel, but Luke’s apprenticeship to a muppet is a drag; that said, Yoda was later brought to life via CGI. THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY is another tough-as-nails class-conscious gangster film from Britain. STARDUST MEMORIES is far from peak Allen but more fun than the more celebrated ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN. Abrams-Zucker’s AIRPLANE! seemed fun but disposable upon release but has endured as an all-time favorite. COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER is as American as apple pie. MY BODYGUARD, now mostly forgotten, is like ROCKY for geeks, part fantasy but with real feelings. URBAN COWBOY replaced the strobe-light with a mechanical horse, and it worked well enough. Perhaps the last decent Travolta performance before his (short-lived) comeback in the 90s. SUPERMAN II is at once sillier and graver than the first movie. It’s marked with Lester’s comic touches but also the anguish of the superhero christ. BREAKER MORANT is the best military courtroom drama since PATHS OF GLORY. Malle’s ATLANTIC CITY is probably his best fiction film, one devoid of the salaciousness, preening moralism, or art film solemnity of his other works. THE LONG RIDERS should have made Walter Hill a legendary director, a rightful heir to Sam Peckinpah, but went mostly ignored. It’s superb in its action choreography and as a reconstruction of a bygone era. HEAVEN’S GATE does much the same on a far grander scale with results ranging from breathtaking to mind-numbing. MELVIN AND HOWARD the underdog folktale manages a neat balance of sympathy and mockery for its ‘hero’, emblematic of what makes Americana so ridiculous but endearing. KAGEMUSHA sounded Kurosawa’s thunderous return as one of the last great epic directors.
RAGING BULL and THE SHINING tie for the crown. Scorsese’s passion play was instantly and widely recognized for its emotional power and technical brilliance, whereas Kubrick’s horror was met with mixed reaction. Despite its weak ending, THE SHINING did for horror what 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY did for science fiction: It opened up whole new dimensions for the genre. Its reputation has grown to mythic proportions over the years.
1981
Scanners – Modern Romance – Cutter’s Way – Thief – Excalibur – History of the World, Part I – Raiders of the Lost Ark – Blow Out – Wolfen – Gallipoli – Prince of the City – Das Boot – Southern Comfort – My Dinner with Andre – Time Bandits – Ragtime – Reds – Four Friends – Chariots of Fire (Oscar winner) – Taps – Eijanaika – Kagero-za – Muddy Water (Japan) – Road Warrior – Diva – Do You Remember Dolly Bell? – Mephisto (Szabo) – Coup de Torchon – Marianne and Juliane (Von Trotta) – Smash Palace – Gregory’s Girl
MODERN ROMANCE is a useful alternative to Woody Allen’s shikse-obsessed neuroticomedies. CUTTER’S WAY is an eccentric reworking of the fashionable Seventies tropes centered on the conspiracy theory, rebel maverick, Vietnam war syndrome, and gangsterism. ROAD WARRIOR is all action but great action. DIVA is all style but fabulous style. DO YOU REMEMBER DOLLY BELL? got Kusturica’s ball rolling as a director to watch. MEPHISTO is entertaining but falls short as a profound statement on the Faustian tensions between politics and art. RAGTIME is a powerful American saga through the lens of Freudianism; its emphasis on black rage somewhat frays its narrative tapestry. BLOW OUT is DePalma’s belated variation on the Paranoid Cinema of the 70s. Its box office failure suggested a shift in the national mood. WOLFEN is intelligent horror, one that mourns the tragic fate of the American Indians without sidestepping the savagery of their existence. DAS BOOT is one of the very best war films, harrowing and suspenseful, lamenting the doomed tragedy of war while honoring the heroism and professionalism of comrades in combat. Lucas thought it, Kasden wrote it, and Spielberg ran with it. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was maybe the most exciting sound movie made up to that time. PRINCE OF THE CITY is Lumet’s greatest film, a work of deep empathy and ethical complexity. Its box office failure probably doomed his prospects of becoming America’s premier director of serious films.
Time has been right on this one. EXCALIBUR is anointed king for 1981. It has resonated over the years and earned its place in the pantheon of great visionary epics.
1982
Shoot the Moon – Personal Best – Missing – Barbarosa – Fitzcarraldo – Deathtrap – Diner – Conan the Barbarian – Poltergeist – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial – Blade Runner – The Thing – Tron – The Draughtsman’s Contract – The Executioner’s Song – 48 Hrs – Gandhi (Oscar winner) – The Verdict – The Grey Fox – The Year of Living Dangerously – Tootsie – Moonlighting – Fanny and Alexander – Identification of a Woman – La Balance – Parsifal(Syberberg) – The Return of Martin Guerre – Night of the Shooting Stars – Yol (Turkey)
Amazon Warrior myth came to life in Robert Towne’s labor of love PERSONAL BEST. Levinson’s debut DINER is almost on par with Fellini’s I VITELLONI. Peter Greenaway, one of the most insufferable personalities in cinema, actually got off to an auspicious start with THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT, a caustic satire that takes sadistic delight in sticking it to the privileged. But then, Greenaway’s anti-snobbery has all the hallmarks of snobbery. It’s like water finding fault with wetness. THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY is a unique cocktail of history, politics, romance, and exoticism, still the best thing ever done by Peter Weir or Mel Gibson. Skolimowskis’ MOONLIGHTING has a Pole in Britain employing tactics similar to those of the Polish communist government to deceive and manipulate illegal workers under his supervision. FANNY AND ALEXANDER is Bergman’s grandest work, beautifully realized, but suffers from self-mythologization and personal vendetta against his late father. 1982 was the year of science fiction. Biggest by far was of course E.T.: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, a kind of Spielberg’s ERASERHEAD. Devised as universal entertainment, it nevertheless conceals Spielberg’s innermost demons. TRON isn’t much as story-telling but amazing as visual concept. THE THING is a crossbred mutant of sci-fi and horror, and it’s one helluva creepy kid.
As with the top pick for 1981, time has rightly chosen BLADE RUNNER as the most outstanding work of 1982.
1983
Videodrome – The King of Comedy – Local Hero – Baby It’s You – Tender Mercies – Bad Boys – The Outsiders – Monty Python’s Meaning of Life – Nostalghia – Eureka – Return of the Jedi – Trading Places – Zelig – Risky Business – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence – Never Cry Wolf – The Right Stuff – Under Fire – The Osterman Weekend – A Christmas Story – Christine – Scarface – Yentl – Makioka Sisters – The Dresser – Educating Rita – And the Ship Sails On – L’Argent – Danton – Entre Nous – First Name: Carmen – Pauline at the Beach – Sans Soleil – Sugar Cane Alley – Ballad of Narayama (Imamura) – The Family Game (Japan) – Urusei Yatsura: Only You (anime) – Project A – Kindergarten(USSR) – Millennial Bee(Slovak) – Utu (New Zealand) – Revolt of Job – Dead Zone
1983 belie those who insist that Eighties cinema was a desert following the creative torrents of the Seventies. With VIDEODROME, Cronenberg emerged as a talent difficult to stomach but impossible to ignore. LOCAL HERO and FAMILY GAME are tonal masterworks, delicate and precise in their plotting. UTU is a great tragicomedy of strategy and folly about a colonial conflict in New Zealand. A Maori warrior in service to the British resorts to violence against whites as reprisal for what was done to his tribe, but what begins as righteous rage, a demand for justice, turns into a giddy reversion to savagery and childlike exultation in bloodlust. The film pinpoints a particular facet of any political violence, with no clear distinction among justice, revenge, and thrill for the hell of it. Imamura’s version of BALLAD OF NARAYAMA is relentlessly coarse and cruel, a harsh bareknuckle depiction of rural life with no room for niceties. However, it’s full of irrepressible life force, the animal drive to survive and procreate. Sayles-minus-sanctimony could make a really good movie. The proof is BABY IT’S YOU. Brickman’s RISKY BUSINESS was for the ‘horny teenager movie’ what HALLOWEEN was for the slasher horror: just about the only decent work in the entire genre. MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is a fever dream by Nagisa Oshima, one that reimagines the Christ myth in the jungles of Indonesia during World War II. THE RIGHT STUFF is both rousing tribute and barbed critique of the American space program. This duality was appreciated by some but probably alienated others, which may explain its box office failure. SCARFACE is one of the greatest trash ever, lurid made fabulous. DANTON is a sobering reflection on the French Revolution, one of Wajda’s best works.
L’ARGENT, Bresson’s final film, and SANS SOLEIL, Chris Marker’s free-association essay, are standouts, but MAKIOKA SISTERS by Kon Ichikawa edges them out as the film of the year.
1984
Broadway Danny Rose – Against All Odds – Repo Man – Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes – Romancing the Stone – The Bounty – The Natural – Once Upon a Time in America – Gremlins – After the Rehearsal – The Karate Kid – The Bostonians – Red Dawn – Tightrope – A Soldier’s Story – Amadeus – Places in the Heart – The Little Drummer Girl – Stop Making Sense – Paris, Texas – The Terminator – The Killing Fields – The Cotton Club – 1984 – A Passage to India – Birdy – Micki & Maude – Mrs. Soffel – A Sunday in the Country – MacArthur’s Children (Japan) – Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind – Stranger than Paradise – Kaos – Home and the World (Satyajit Ray) – 28 Up – Crazy Family (Japan) – Yellow Earth (China) – Streetwise – Cal (Ireland)
RED DAWN is an exercise in underdog envy. Americans, who went around invading and bombing the world, roleplay as the ‘Viet Cong’ against Soviet occupiers. THE NATURAL excessively basks in nostalgia but works its wonders as mythmaking, with America’s favorite pastime serving as a metaphor of Biblical proportions. PLACES IN THE HEART and SOLDIER’S STORY are respectable enough but marred by their sense of self-importance. THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL is a rather complicated political thriller diluted by Diane Keaton’s airhead persona. The Japanese comedy CRAZY FAMILY is stupid but wild fun. Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage develop real chemistry, but Alan Parker’s obnoxious direction sends BIRDY over the cliff. Abrahamson’s flowery performance and Forman’s directorial flair do it for AMADEUS, but Hulce is disastrous, a cartoon dog with its tongue hanging out. The story’s case is diminished by pitting Mozart against dwarfs than against other giants. It’s like demonstrating a boxer’s greatness by showing him beat up old ladies. Even for non-fans of Talking Heads, STOP MAKING SENSE is a marvel, one of the best Rock concert films. AGAINST ALL ODDS is worth watching for Rachel Ward’s beauty, James Woods’ intensity, and the great title track. THE TERMINATOR is still the best thing Cameron ever did, a taut action thriller where nothing goes to waste. A PASSAGE TO INDIA is David Lean’s magisterial return to form. THE BOUNTY conveys the contradiction inherent in the imperial project, the hierarchy and discipline essential to the maintenance of empire at odds with the seductive allure of newfound spoils and liberties. THE KILLING FIELDS was likely the best of its kind since THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, one of those films that make history come alive. BROADWAY DANNY ROSE is Allen’s first compound than a mere mixture of comedy and drama. A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY is the genuine article, a bourgeois work of art. For a fuller appreciation, it merely need be set next to the forgeries of the Merchant-Ivory team. NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, Hayao Miyazaki’s first great animation, soars with imagination but is marred by an implausible ending(even for a fantasy).
There’s no doubt in my mind that the greatest film of 1984 is Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, as much a dream destination for Leone as reaching the Pacific coast was for Mr. Choo-Choo in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.
1985
Blood Simple – The Falcon and the Snowman – Fandango – Maria’s Lovers – Vision Quest – The Purple Rose of Cairo – The Sure Thing – The Hit – Lost in America – King David – Code of Silence – Prizzi’s Honor – Back to the Future – The Emerald Forest – Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – Real Genius – Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – Year of the Dragon – After Hours – Death of a Salesman – Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters – Twice in a Lifetime – Eleni – To Live and Die in L.A. – The Official Story – Runaway Train – Trouble in Mind – Ran – Revolution – Trip to Bountiful – Brazil – Defence of the Realm – My Beautiful Laundrette – The Shooting Party – Police Story – Yes, Madam – Fire Festival(Himatsuri) – Tampopo – When Father Was Away on Business – Hey Babu Riba, aka Dancing in Water – Come and See(USSR) – Dance with a Stranger – Witness (Weir) – Vagabond (Varda) – Hour of the Star (Brazil) – Horse (Ozgenturk) – The Lightship (Skolimowski) – Colonel Redl – The Legend of Suram Fortress
THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN was a comeback for John Schlesinger. REAL GENIUS and PEE-WEE HERMAN’S BIG ADVENTURE are great fun. AFTER HOURS caught the tensions between yuppies and bohemians before the two demographics would later merge. YEAR OF THE DRAGON is overblown but entertaining. TROUBLE IN MIND is like art-trash and as such was somewhat ahead of its time. BRAZIL deserves points for ambition but is ultimately grotesque and childish. DEATH OF A SALESMAN is little more than a filmed play, with odds against it working as cinema, but the fine performances do the trick. HEY BABU RIBA is sentimental in the best sense, also heartbreaking in retrospect given what was to befall Yugoslavia. RUNAWAY TRAIN, Konchalovsky’s film based on Kurosawa’s screenplay, strips everything down to its elementary components: men are beasts driven by ego in a game of power in a universe hurtling toward who knows what. It’s a bit too much but thrilling as action suspense. The much maligned REVOLUTION(Hugh Hudson) is actually a fine historical drama and a moving father-and-son tale. POLICE STORY has some of the most amazing action choreography ever; YES MADAM even more so. COME AND SEE staggers back and forth between turgid drama and bombastic violence but with undeniable power. Meathead Rob Reiner made one of the sweetest teen romances with THE SURE THING, deservedly an instant classic. THE HIT is a mean lean gangster road movie with John Hurt and Terence Stamp in top form. It’s better than anything by Michael Mann. LOST IN AMERICA, ostensibly a goofball comedy about delusional yuppies, offers some trenchant insights into the true nature of power and status. FANDANGO has too much to prove as a young male fantasy with an excess of pranksterish hijinks, but it’s also a poetic tribute to the twilight of youth. Spike Lee would later get all the credit for his social drama on racial relations, but a far superior film is MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE by Stephen Frears, a work with full-bloodied characters making real talk than racial archetypes making speeches. BLOOD SIMPLE was no fluke as the Coen Brothers would demonstrate in the coming years. WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS secured Kusturica’s vaunted place among the new crop of directors. However, despite the awards and accolades, he never really won the affection of the cinephile community that found his full-bloodied humanism too unruly to contain within ideological frameworks, a problem faced earlier by Lina Wertmuller. RAN is fatally flawed at its tragic core but magnificent as historical epic and compelling as political drama.
The most astounding film of the year is Friedkin’s greatest work TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., a crime thriller that has yet to be equaled.
1986
Hannah and Her Sisters – Salvador – Nomads – Mona Lisa – Big Trouble in Little China – Aliens – Heartburn – The Fly – Manhunter – Blue Velvet – Down by Law – Round Midnight – Peggy Sue Got Married – The Mission – Sid and Nancy – Something Wild – Hoosiers – The Mosquito Coast – Heartbreak Ridge – Platoon (Oscar winner)- Better Tomorrow – Jean de Florette – Manon of the Spring – The Sacrifice – Devoted to You (Hong Kong) – Laputa: Castle in the Sky – Gonza the Spearman – Brighton Beach Memoirs – Big Easy – The Green Ray, aka Summer (Rohmer) – Melo (Resnais) – Thérèse (Cavalier) – Sherman’s March (McElwee)
Coppola’s dominant mode in the 80s, especially with PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, was nostalgia, his own or of the collective psyche. Of course, Lucas beat him to it with AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Coppola, for all his futurist rhetoric on cinema, found himself hopelessly drawn to the past. Oliver Stone understandably won the Oscar for PLATOON given its subject, its treatment(contra the cartoonish Rambo movies), and his own credibility for having served in Vietnam. Tarkovsky’s final film, THE SACRIFICE, is a powerful testament on the fragility of civilization faced with technology that can end the world. It’s no wonder THE TERMINATOR was one of his favorite movies. One wonders what he thought of DR. STRANGELOVE. The documentary SHERMAN’S MARCH is what happens when a beta-male dork gets hold of a camera. If Sherman’s actual march physically laid waste to the South, the softer forces shown in the film seem to be finishing off what’s left. Resnais’ experimentalism aged like fine wine, to be poured and enjoyed, as with MELO and the subsequent works that had nothing more to prove and just played for the pleasure of playing. SID AND NANCY captures the cultural significance of punk and its attendant pathologies. BLUE VELVET restored Lynch’s reputation after the fiasco of DUNE and pointed him in the direction that would eventually lead to TWIN PEAKS and MULHOLLAND DR.
The two greatest films of 1986 are SOMETHING WILD and LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY, both constituting the absolute summits for their directors. Demme’s film covers much the same ground as BLUE VELVET but in a subtler, less strident way, and Miyazaki’s epic is truly out of this world.
1987
Radio Days – Light of Day – Angel Heart – Tin Men – Gardens of Stone – The Untouchables – Spaceballs – Full Metal Jacket – Robocop – No Way Out – Hamburger Hill – Matewan – Maurice – House of Games – Hope and Glory – The Sicilian – The Last Emperor (Oscar winner) – Housekeeping – Planes, Trains and Automobiles – Walker – Wall Street – The Dead – Broadcast News – Empire of the Sun – Prick Up Your Ears – Boyfriends and Girlfriends – Au Revoir Les Enfants – Beatrice – Wings of Desire – Under the Sun of Satan – Eastern Condors – Taxing Woman – Zegen – Pelle the Conqueror – Chinese Ghost Story – Stacking (Megan Follows) – Yeleen(Brightness) – Red Sorghum – Shy People – Open Doors (Italy) – Bubblegum Crisis – Cobra Verde – Where Is My Friend’s Home?
Alan Parker is his usual obnoxious self with ANGEL HEART but hits the mark on occasion. ROBOCOP is Verhoeven’s Eurocentric pop satire of American politics and culture, presenting as entertainment what is really meant as insult. “You dumb Americans are crypto-fascists obsessed with guns, so go ahead and wallow in your own filth.” PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES has all the shortcomings associated with John Hughes but also strengths wholly missing in his other movies. WALL STREET couldn’t hope to replicate the success of PLATOON, possibly the biggest film event since E.T., but proved to be far more prescient. As Stone saw it, the danger lay not so much in greed itself, an eternal and ineradicable condition of man, but in its new shameless manifestation. One might even draw links between the concomitant shamelessness of greed and shamelessness of decadence, which may explain the close links between the oligarchs and the homos. NO WAY OUT is in many respects a standard suspense thriller, but it’s also provocative in the way it teases out the homo-psychology of power and the tensions between the political and the personal. WALKER by Alex Cox is one of the most brilliant satires about American foreign policy and how nothing ever changes despite all the changes. THE LAST EMPEROR and EMPIRE OF THE SUN coincided as two vast, expansive epics set in wartime China. One is stately, the other is state-of-the-art, and both are remarkable. HOUSE OF GAMES hinted at Mamet’s intuitive grasp of film, on his first try no less, even more impressive than Mike Nichols with WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, given that Mamet wrote his own material. Mamet’s advantage as filmmaker owes to his sense of limitations, i.e. his forte being drama, he constructs films around his core strengths than venturing into cinematic temptations beyond his ken.
The two greatest works of 1987 are FULL METAL JACKET and the anime series BUBBLEGUM CRISIS(which, to be sure, began in 1987 and was completed in 1991 with the eighth and final episode). Kubrick’s war film is like no other. The Vietnam War is less the subject than the prism through which to ponder the harnessing by civilization of man’s savage instincts for the purposes of war, a dualistic endeavor engaging at once the most advanced and most animalistic aspects of mankind. As for the remarkable anime, which has all the hallmarks of a modern myth, it draws influence from just about everything cool and far-out, to which it adds its own tricks and twists. Along with Miyazaki’s masterworks, it represents the very best of Japanese animation
1988
Frantic – Babette’s Feast – Stand and Deliver – Bright Lights, Big City – Big – Bull Durham – A World Apart – Die Hard – Midnight Run – Monkey Shines – The Last Temptation of Christ – Tucker: The Man and His Dream – The Thin Blue Line – Dead Ringers – Patty Hearst – Mystic Pizza – Things Change – Rain Man – Working Girl – Distant Voices, Still Lives – High Hopes – Little Dorrit – Shag – Camille Claudel – Cinema Paradiso – Story of Women – The Vanishing (Sluizer) – Painted Faces – Akira – My Neighbor Totoro – Ashik Kerib – Apartment Zero – Ariel (Kaurismaki)
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST is an unholy and unruly mess. Oddly enough, the scenes that caused the controversy are its most powerful. CINEMA PARADISO is nothing if not sentimental, but the world needs more sentimental movies like it needs more silly love songs. THE VANISHING shakes one to the core, laying bare the vulnerabilities of conscience and sentiment in face of stone-cold evil. RAIN MAN is rather interesting as a crypto-Jewish tale. AKIRA has a great opening and then veers off madness. MYSTIC PIZZA is maybe the best chick flick ever. DEAD RINGERS is among Cronenberg’s films perhaps the hardest nut to crack. THE THIN BLUE LINE explores the ways in which the truth is arrived at in the most unexpected and unintended ways. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO was an instant classic, rightly so.
MIDNIGHT RUN is clearly the most entertaining movie of the year, but the top honor goes to DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES by Terence Davies.
1989
Farewell to the King – Heathers – Dead Calm – Pet Sematary – Miss Firecracker – Scandal – Miracle Mile – Casualties of War – Black Rain(Imamura) – Johnny Handsome – Crimes and Misdemeanors – Drugstore Cowboy – Fat Man and Little Boy – Mystery Train – Enemies, A Love Story – Born on the Fourth of July – Always – My Left Foot – Life and Nothing But – Monsieur Hire – Violent Cop – Black Rain (Ridley Scott) – Time of the Gypsies – Rikyu (Teshigahara) – Seventh Continent – Freeze Die Come to Life (USSR) – An Enemy of the People (Satyajit Ray)
John Milius finally got to do his thing his way with FAREWELL TO THE KING, perhaps intended as a partial corrective to Coppola’s deviation from the original ending as written for APOCALYPSE NOW. The Stephen King adaptation PET SEMATARY is trashy but gets under your skin. Holly Hunter shines in ALWAYS. Teshigahara’s RIKYU is a gracious tribute to artistic integrity and its political cost. SEVENTH CONTINENT is Michael Haneke’s unsparing look at the sick soul of Europe, a disease he shares in its collective urge to drive the entirety of Western Civilization off the cliff. VIOLENT COP, Kitano’s first directorial effort, hits like a hammer. MIRACLE MILE was quickly forgotten as a rom-com with nukes but is surprisingly profound for a Hollywood movie. The writer-director probably pitched the big idea in genre-adjacent terms to get it produced. Imamura grappled with the grave subject of Hiroshima in BLACK RAIN, but his forte was natural expression than understatement, the main mode of the narrative. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS manages a near-perfect balance of comedy and drama, one of Allen’s finest achievements. Stone garnered yet more praise with his second Vietnam film, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, with Tom Cruise in tow in his most challenging role yet.
The two richest films of 1989 are LIFE AND NOTHING BUT, a plaintive discourse on the coping mechanisms of France in the aftermath of the Great War, and TIME OF THE GYPSIES, which edges out the win as simply one of the greatest films ever.
1990
Surefire (Jon Jost) – Flatliners – Mountains of the Moon – Men Don’t Leave – Last Exit to Brooklyn – Dick Tracy – The Freshman – Metropolitan – The Exorcist III – Pump Up the Volume – Darkman – Dreams (Kurosawa) – Goodfellas – Avalon (Levinson) – Miller’s Crossing – Memphis Belle – To Sleep with Anger – Jacob’s Ladder – Mr. and Mrs. Bridge – The Grifters – The Sheltering Sky – The Russia House – The Godfather Part III – The Comfort of Strangers – The Field (Sheridan) – Daddy Nostalgia – Europa Europa – My Father’s Glory – My Mother’s Castle – Boiling Point (Kitano) – Tremors – Second Circle (Russia) – Match Factory Girl (Kaurismaki)
MEN DON’T LEAVE, Paul Brickman’s follow-up to RISKY BUSINESS, got good press but apparently sank his directorial prospects. THE EXORCIST III is trashy but scary. EUROPA EUROPA tackles the politics of identity through the travails of a Jewish kid posing as an Aryan in Nazi Germany. Though sympathetic to the Jewish kid, the subtext implies the rootless Jew will don any mask to survive, whereas the Nazis, for all their evils, operated on the basis of collective honor, even unto death. THE GODFATHER PART III was unnecessary but also a missed opportunity as something more interesting could have been done with it. SUREFIRE is as depressing a film as one would expect from Jon Jost. SECOND CIRCLE is even bleaker as a depiction of moral rot in Soviet society on its last legs. Adrian Lyne, a shameless sensationalist like Alan Parker, surprisingly hit the mark with the frightfully effective JACOB’S LADDER, a psychological thriller par excellence. MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON is Rafelson’s best work, a historical epic on the vagaries of empire as personified by the clashing wills of two extraordinary adventurers. BOILING POINT is nasty Kitano but also his most eccentric, even experimental, work. DICK TRACY is Pop Art come to life. If a film can be said to have a soul, a beautiful one at that, METROPOLITAN and DADDY NOSTALGIA are it. MILLER’S CROSSING now seems more impressive and relevant than ever, with its great use of actors and its thesis of American democracy as really an ethno-centered gangsterism.
Even though GOODFELLAS is indisputably the best film of 1990(and anyone saying otherwise should be whacked), keep in mind that the Coens wrote as well as directed, which makes them the Bob Dylan of cinema, whereas Scorsese has been the Sinatra relying on other people’s original material.
1991
Defending Your Life – Mister Johnson – Terminator 2: Judgment Day – Slacker – A Bright Summer Day – Barton Fink – The Fisher King – Billy Bathgate – The Double Life of Veronique – Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse – Bugsy – JFK – Naked Lunch – Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, aka The Lovers on the Bridge – La Belle Noiseuse – Van Gogh (Pialat) – Yumeji (Suzuki) – Rhapsody in August – Fall of Otrar – Homicide (Mamet) – Highway Patrolman – Life on a String (China) – Raise the Red Lantern
TERMINATOR 2 has a great first act, continuing in the vein of the tightly constructed original, but the rest meanders into a mishmash of mindless action. The miracle of THE FISHER KING is that it works DESPITE Terry Gilliam’s childish antics masquerading as ‘genius filmmaking’. SLACKER isn’t much, but some sensed right away that Linklater was someone to watch. They were right. JFK is overly manipulative even as it rails against deep state manipulations; still, it started a conversation. LA BELLE NOISEUSE has its defenders as a formalist masterpiece, but it takes a certain mindset, one of patient concentration, to appreciate it. HIGHWAY PATROLMAN is ‘economic’ in the best sense, an ideal model for independent filmmakers to make the most out of shoestring budgets. Alex Cox was like a nomadic patron saint of the cut-the-fat approach to filmmaking. The Coens raised it up a notch as ‘serious’ filmmakers with BARTON FINK, a strange brew of humor and horror. THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE came to be known as the French HEAVEN’S GATE, in retrospect not entirely damning given the revisionism on the latter as overly maligned and woefully underappreciated.
It’s difficult to choose the year’s best among the Kafkaesque HOMICIDE, David Mamet’s greatest work, the fatalistic A BRIGHT SUMMER DAY, Edward Yang’s carefully observed four-hour album of daily life, and the sprawling FALL OF OTRAR, Ardak Amirkulov’s earthen epic blowing with archaeological dust and stinking with authenticity… and the nod goes to Amirkulov who went for broke.
1992
The Player – Night on Earth – Alien 3 – Europa, aka Zentropa – The Adjuster – The Best Intentions – Enchanted April – Unforgiven (Oscar winner) – The Last of the Mohicans – Glengarry Glen Ross – Reservoir Dogs – Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Flirting (Duigan) – Malcolm X – Hoffa – Bitter Moon – The Long Day Closes – Savage Nights (Collard) – A Tale of Winter (Rohmer) – La Vie de Bohème (Kaurismaki) – Minbo (Itami) – Porco Rosso – Luna Park (Russia) – Crush (MacLean) – Story of Qui Ju – Vacas (Spain) – Sunday’s Children
ALIEN 3 or ALIEN³ is considered by many as the worst in the franchise, but Fincher’s take is by far the most striking and inventive. ENCHANTED APRIL is lovely. The now forgotten SAVAGE NIGHTS caused quite a buzz when the cursed disease of A.I.D.S was being nudged toward consecration, i.e. the illness was construed less as a product of sexual degeneracy than as a kind of passion play, or a cross to bear, for those who dare to be different, true to themselves. Since then, idiot whites have come to venerate homos as holy, without whose blessings they have no hope of entering secular heaven where Will Stancil on all fours wiggles his ass with a LGBTQ flag sticking out of it. MINBO may have cost Juzo Itami his life for mocking the Yakuza. The Russian skinhead film LUNA PARK is gut-wrenching, ultimately a bit heart-rending. Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN is well-crafted but strained, earnest but disingenuous. A revisionist Western, Eastwood dispenses with his trademark cool and wanders around like a clueless stone-faced Indian in search of Ex-Lax. VACAS, with the Spanish Civil War as backdrop, isn’t easy to categorize. Just call it unique. The distance between Bergman and the material — he wrote but his son directed — lends balance to SUNDAY’S CHILDREN. What Bergman might have obsessed over, his son quietly observed. FLIRTING is one of the better coming-of-age film, about an intellectual type no less, rare for the genre. BITTER MOON the nightmare comedy may well be Polanski’s most personal work. Coppola went all in with BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. It made money but little sense with its Beetlejuice-like vampire. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is anemic as historical drama but pulse-pounding as action-romance. GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is a wonder. Great material, smart direction, and top-notch performances all around. RESERVOIR DOGS is Tarantino’s outstanding debut and still his finest work. THE LONG DAY CLOSES is another masterwork by Terence Davies, perhaps the Marcel Proust of British cinema.
The greatest film of 1992 is THE BEST INTENTIONS, written by Bergman and directed by Bille August. Bergman might have felt that something so personal needed an ‘honest broker’ to do full justice to each of the characters.
1993
Groundhog Day – Jurassic Park – The Firm – In the Line of Fire – The Fugitive – The Secret Garden – Manhattan Murder Mystery – King of the Hill – True Romance – Household Saints – Age of Innocence – Dazed and Confused – A Bronx Tale – Short Cuts – Gettysburg – Fearless (Weir) – Rudy – Ruby in Paradise – The Remains of the Day – Carlito’s Way – A Perfect World – Six Degrees of Separation – Geronimo: An American Legend – Schindler’s List (Oscar winner) – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – Heaven & Earth – In the Name of the Father – Naked (Leigh) – Shadowlands – The Scent of Green Papaya – Smoking/No Smoking (Resnais) – Madadayo – Sonatine (Kitano) – Secret Adventure of Tom Thumb – East is Red, aka Swordsman III (Hong Kong) – Killing Zoe – Thirty-Two Films about Glenn Gould – Farewell My Concubine – Time Indefinite (McElwee) – Blue Kite – Clean, Shaven – Caro Diario – Guelwaar – Raining Stones – The Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (China)
1993 was hailed as one of the best in film history. GROUNDHOG DAY is like a doctoral thesis on philosophy(or theology) in the form of a holiday movie. Is it a model of how complex ideas can be delivered to a wider audience, or too clever by half? THE FIRM is standard fare, but its suggestion of American corporatism as a legalized form of gangsterism is food for thought. But why does it always have to be the Italians hiding in the shadows? In the medical thriller THE FUGITIVE, Harrison Ford plays a wronged man with Indiana-Jones levels of luck and resilience. A BRONX TALE is a surprisingly good first effort by De Niro in the driver’s seat, but Chazz Palminteri takes over the steering. TRUE ROMANCE rarely rises above the level of trash but does so with electrifying results. SHORT CUTS, Altman’s crazy-quilt multi-portrait of L.A., was his most ambitious project since NASHVILLE, but it comes apart at the seams. If NASHVILLE constituted a community of shared values or intersecting interests, the Los Angeles of SHORTS CUTS is too sprawling and fragmentary to coalesce into a unified vision. The whole concept seems a bit forced, threading together mostly isolated or unrelated narrative strands. FEARLESS is new age hokum, a mixture of Scientologism and Ayn-Randism smoked as crack, but it holds a certain stupid fascination. Weir the Australian, like Verhoeven the Dutchman, drew the conclusion that the only way to stay in the business was to put everything in bold letters with lots of exclamation marks, lest the dummies, the vast majority of moviegoers around the world enthralled with Hollywood, miss the point. Eastwood once again strained for meaning with the overbaked A PERFECT WORLD. Schepisi’s adaptation of Guare’s play, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, starts smart about race and class but then stoops to ‘liberal’ cliches at the end. GETTYSBURG, originally made for Cable TV, does justice to American history. SCHINDLER’S LIST pushes hard with violence but plays safe with drama. Mike Leigh’s NAKED is an exhibitionism of neurotic impulses, or is it just bloody stupidity on display? Like Oliver Stone’s vile NATURAL BORN KILLERS(of the following year), it’s an admittance of ideological exhaustion in face of unrelenting nihilism. SHADOWLANDS is nicely done but with a stupid message: There is no higher calling for a white Christian than to comfort a Jew. Kitano’s SONATINE may have started the trend of the gangster-on-vacation movie. The stop-motion animation short SECRET ADVENTURE OF TOM THUMB is really weird. SWORDSMAN III has some far out action choreography. CARO DIARIO is an insightful and humane comedy, rare these days. JURASSIC PARK offers wonderment and fright. It was Spielberg’s best movie since CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. Agnieszka Holland’s THE SECRET GARDEN is a true delight, a children’s tale of dreams and heartache. MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY is a perfect blend of comedy, drama, and suspense. One of Allen’s very best. Scorsese ventured beyond the familiar turf of the Italian-American experience, urban contemporary realities, and/or overtly Catholic themes with AGE OF INNOCENCE, a period costume-drama set in the exclusive world of 19th century New York high society, one profoundly different from his own yet no less bound by codes of silence and honor. Beautifully realized but fatally flawed by Michelle Pfeiffer who is, incredibly enough, duller than Winona Ryder, thus disqualifying the underlying passion of the story. GERONIMO could have done without Matt Damon. HEAVEN & EARTH finally told the Vietnam story from the other side, a woman no less. FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE and BLUE KITE are outstanding films from China, differently conceived but equally powerful. CLEAN, SHAVEN comes close to approximating the inner life of a schizophrenic. SMOKING/NO SMOKING is Resnais having fun with his belatedly discovered muse Sabine Azema. RUDY is mostly BS despite its claim of ‘based on a true story’ but done so well.
It’s impossible to choose between CARLITO’S WAY, of which DePalma admitted he couldn’t do any better, and DAZED AND CONFUSED, Linklater’s semi-autobiographical and anthropological trip back to the American teen experience of the 1970s. Most likely, Linklater can’t do any better.
1994
Blink – Body Snatchers – The Inkwell – Speed – Wyatt Earp – It Could Happen to You – Clear and Present Danger – Quiz Show – The Shawshank Redemption – Ed Wood – Hoop Dreams – Pulp Fiction – Bullets over Broadway – Oleanna – Interview with the Vampire – Cobb – Little Women – Nobody’s Fool – The Madness of King George – Ladybird, Ladybird – Burnt by the Sun – Colonel Chabert – L’Enfer – Three Colors: White – Three Colors: Red – Wild Reeds – Ashes of Time – Before the Rain (Manchevski) – To Live (Yimou) – Lamerica – An Unforgettable Summer (Pintilie) – Underground (Kusturica)
There’s nothing quite like THE INKWELL, a quirky coming-of-age story that brushes aside the prevailing attitudes within black culture. It has the courage to be different. SPEED — the title says it all. ED WOOD implies what, that Tim Burton is Ed Wood with talent? INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE is short on sense but tall on looks. BURNT BY THE SUN, a searing indictment of Stalinism, details the devious and ruthless means by which the system ground down anyone, even a war hero, suspected of independence of mind and spirit. AN UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER is poetic drama but feels incomplete. THREE COLORS: RED is the best of the Kieslowski trilogy. LAMERICA bemoans Western parasitism’s leeching off what little is left of the former communist bloc. COLONEL CHABERT is superb period drama. BODY SNATCHERS is yet another outstanding variation on the Pod People concept.
The most ambitious, if not entirely successful, work of 1994 is Kusturica’s UNDERGROUND.
1995
Before Sunrise – Billy Madison – Quick and the Dead – Exotica – Rob Roy – Crumb – Village of the Damned – Safe – Living in Oblivion – Waterworld – Babe – The Usual Suspects – Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach) – Casino – Wild Bill – Sense and Sensibility – Heat (Mann) – Nixon – La Cérémonie (Chabrol) – La Haine – Maborosi – Shanghai Triad (Yimou) – Il Postino
BEFORE SUNRISE is too coy for comfort, a bit smug, more a work of affectation than affection, a what-if thesis better suited for a pop song. BILLY MADISON is irresistible. How about that ‘borophyll’? Carpenter’s VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is superior to the original. LIVING IN OBLIVION is an indie film turning on its own flea-bitten or fly-by-night ‘industry’, albeit with good humor. THE USUAL SUSPECTS is redeemed by its cast. Tim Roth steals the show in ROB ROY. Michael Mann’s HEAT is a well-tailored piece of crime chic. MABOROSI got Hirokazu Kore-eda noticed in the film festival circuit. CRUMB probes into the world of the (in)famous underground comic artist, the sociocultural forces that shaped him and the inner-world in which he took refuge; repellent made fascinating, like studying a sewer rat in its realm. WATERWORLD’s immediate fate was burial at sea, but its outsized imagination, zaniness, and humor call for a reevaluation. Never mind the Titanic; I say raise the Waterworld. WILD BILL follows the final days of a doomed gunslinger, a kind of an out-lawman, a bastard as well as a hero, faced with the loss of vision and haunted by a lifetime of bloodletting, betrayal, and unfinished business. Walter Hill’s films didn’t make money in the 1990s but are among the best of the decade. Before Atom Egoyan became a total joke, a puppet of Zionists and a propagandist for globohomo, he was a real artist, a master of empathy and irony. EXOTICA is one of his finest. NIXON is Oliver Stones’ greatest work and probably the best film about American politics.
That said, 1995 belongs to Scorsese’s CASINO.
1996
Bottle Rocket – Fargo – Land and Freedom – Primal Fear – My Favorite Season (Techine) – Dead Man – Lone Star – Kingpin – The Island of Dr. Moreau – American Buffalo – Last Man Standing – Michael Collins – When We Were Kings – The Crucible – Sling Blade – Mars Attack! – Mother (Albert Brooks) – People vs Larry Flynt – L’Appartement – Ponette – Kids Return (Kitano) – Shall We Dance? (Japan) – Pusher (Refn) – Hamsun – Chalk (Nilsson) – Irma Vep – Bound
SHALL WE DANCE? falters with its supporting cast but flourishes with its leads. The only reason for watching PRIMAL FEAR is Edward Norton’s devilish charm. MICHAEL COLLINS is an efficient piece of historical drama, perhaps a bit too slick; history doesn’t move that smoothly. THE CRUCIBLE has powerful performances if not much else. The gimmick-ridden SLING BLADE has a better retard than Gump. PUSHER is almost clinical in its reenactment of criminal behavior. CHALK is a messy tale about messed-up lives but with glimpses of nobility in their striving for pride and meaning. BOUND, Wachowski’s first outing, is where gender meets genre. KIDS RETURN is Kitano’s offbeat, sometimes deadpan, reminiscence of the lower strata of the Japanese school system where kids are fated for low-end jobs or dead-end lives. The limited prospects, however, fuel the requisite delusion or desperation for going the extra step. MARS ATTACK! is Tim Burton is at his funniest and most inventive best, one that seals the deal for him as Ed Wood with talent. LAND AND FREEDOM is overly nostalgic about the members of the international left who took part in the Spanish Civil War, but it’s a work of dignity and intelligence. Jan Troell’s masterpiece HAMSUM features one of Max Von Sydow’s greatest performances. Place latter-day Von Sydow side by side with latter-day Christopher Plummer, and there is no comparison. It’s like oil-painting vs crayon. FARGO is amazing; it may be the most cartoonish of serious dramas, like an art film done with Looney Tunes characters. It’s a wonder that it works at all.
But by far the best film of 1996 is Gilles Mimouni’s L’APPARTEMENT. It’s simply one of the greatest ever.
1997
Lost Highway – Donnie Brasco – Daytrippers – Crash (Cronenberg) – The Fifth Element – Ulee’s Gold – Face/Off – In the Company of Men – The Ice Storm – Fast, Cheap & Out of Control – Gattaca – The Sweet Hereafter – Alien Resurrection – The Apostle – Kundun – Cure (Japan) – Unagi (Imamura) – Hanabi (Kitano) – Brat, aka Brother (Russia) – Mother and Son (Sokurov) – Open Your Eyes (Spain)
LOST HIGHWAY is David Lynch in need of a map. THE FIFTH ELEMENT is more pinball machine than movie. DONNIE BRASCO grapples with complications of loyalty tugged apart by considerations of duty, honor, glamour, and personal attachment. It succeeds in its denouement where CRUISING, also starring Al Pacino, failed. DAYTRIPPERS cleverly makes the best of indie-film liberties and limitations. IN THE COMPANY OF MEN is a nasty piece of work, all the more so in its suggestion that even the victims deserve what they get, sort of. ICE STORM is a smart, if not particularly insightful, peek into upper middle class lives, some quietly desperate, some neurotic or just plain bored enough to try something different, usually stupid. A mature film about immature people. Kitano dissolved the boundaries between cops and gangsters in HANABI, with spouse drama in tow. Crude and sadistic at times, bordering on nihilism, but gentle and wistful in others. An indication of an existence defined more by sensibility than morality, whereby the impermissible in one space is possible in another. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s psychological horror CURE may be his only great film. UNAGI is relatively subdued for Imamura, a case study of recovery and redemption for an all-too-normal man met with abnormal circumstances before and after his imprisonment.
There is no clear winner for 1997, but Martin Scorsese’s KUNDUN, Alejandro Amenábar’s sci-fi-romance OPEN YOUR EYES, and Errol Morris’ FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL especially stand out, and the nod goes to Morris for a most amazing free-association essay in search of rhymes and similes among seemingly unrelated phenomena.
1998
Big Lebowski – The Newton Boys – The Spanish Prisoner – Deep Impact – Clockwatchers – Insomnia (Norway) – The Truman Show – The Last Days of Disco – Small Soldiers – Saving Private Ryan – Ronin – Rushmore – American History X – A Simple Plan – The General (Boorman) – The Thin Red Line – Affliction – Croupier – My Name Is Joe – Alice and Martin (Techine) – The Dreamlife of Angels – Dr. Akagi, aka Kanzo Sensei – Pi (Aronofsky) – Secret Defense (Rivette) – Black Cat, White Cat (Kusturica) – The Celebration (Vinterberg) – Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl – The Dinner Game
CLOCKWATCHERS has oddball charm, Toni Collette, and Parker Posey, apparently enough for a good movie. THE TRUMAN SHOW is like Satire-for-Dummies, its points too obvious, but perhaps with the deeper sense that satire itself is subsumed into the all-pervasive entertainment biosphere none of us can escape. SMALL SOLDIERS is a satire of militarism in the style of children’s entertainment, a daring and disturbing concept for a movie. But, is freakdom really the antidote to ‘fascist’ impulses, especially given the happy marriage of freakdom and militarism in American hegemonism, e.g. “support Ukraine Nazis because they’re on the side of tranny rights”? Frankenheimer’s RONIN is like its characters: pure professionalism. AMERICAN HISTORY X is surprisingly complex, even nuanced, given the incendiary subject matter. Boorman intended THE GENERAL as counterpoint to GOODFELLAS, as bitter porter than champagne. PI was Aronofsky’s not-so-humble debut, a small film with big ideas. THE CELEBRATION, perhaps the best of the ‘Dogma’ films, drags out more skeletons from the bourgeois closet. (With all these young white guys pestering old white guys about past sexual improprieties, it’s no wonder there’s so little energy left to address the problems of grooming gangs and Third World rapists.) Joan Chen’s XIU XIU: THE SENT DOWN GIRL is a matter-of-fact story of one of the countless urban youths ‘voluntarily’ assigned to farming villages so as to rein in the excesses of The Cultural Revolution. It’s an unsparing portrait of subsistence and survival, where even ideology(in the most radical country in the world) wilts under pressure of reality. It would make an interesting double-bill with WOMAN IN THE DUNES. The crime drama CROUPIER was something of a comeback for Mike Hodges who directed GET CARTER. Almost universally celebrated was THIN RED LINE as Malick’s triumphant return to filmmaking, but for all its ambition and claim to depth, it’s rather meandering and sanctimonious. THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS is a tart slice-of-life drama from France, covering some of the same ground as Bresson’s UNE FEMME DOUCE. The challenges of existing without a compelling reason for existence. THE SPANISH PRISONER is another tricky cat-and-mouse game from David Mamet. Unlike his earlier films, it’s all strategy, zero psychology. THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO offers lively conversation, lots of music, and keen insights into youthful urbanites at the dawn of ‘yuppie-dom’. Critics who derided the film as too ‘white bread’ for disco missed the point as the film is really a class comedy of manners whose time frame happens to coincide with the disco craze. Thus, what is black to some, ‘gay’ to others, and John Travolta to the rest of the world, is to the film’s characters an exclusive domain of hierarchy and status, almost like an urban royal court, i.e. people will make of anything what they will, like Christianity was never pure Christianity but whatever various groups made of it. In the film, the kind of people one would least associate with disco express the deepest appreciation for it. For one character especially, it’s not a passing fad but a Camelot to be remembered, hopefully even restored; in a way, the components of disco were salvaged by ‘white bread’ elements in the rise of bands like New Order, Pet Shop Boys, and other New Wave acts, just like the hoity toity British of all people were the ones to give new life to the blues. RUSHMORE made Wes Anderson the patron saint of bipolar(or is it aspergy?) eccentricity. His best work still. Kusturica’s BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT is laugh-a-minute but also a colorful and all-embracing celebration of life. Perhaps the funniest ‘art film’ ever. DR. AKAGI, Imamura’s penultimate work, was a return to the kind of approach, a tireless gnawing at buried truths, that made his reputation in the Sixties. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, like SCHINDLER’S LIST, is a landmark in violence but a playground in drama. “Tell me I’m a good man”, indeed, LOL. The Coens’ BIG LEBOWSKI was likely conceived as a cult film, which it became, in other words a case of mission accomplished despite the box office failure.
Jacques Rivette’s SECRET DEFENSE is the winner of 1998, one of his few works that are both challenging as a formalistic exercise and accessible as a human story.
1999
All About My Mother – The Winslow Boy (Mamet) – Election – eXistenZ – Run Lola Run – Eyes Wide Shut – The Iron Giant – The Sixth Sense – The Thomas Crown Affair – The 13th Warrior – Guinevere – The Limey – Fight Club – The Straight Story – Bringing Out the Dead – Being John Malkovich – Mononoke Hime – The Insider (Mann) – Anywhere But Here – Felicia’s Journey – Ride with the Devil – The End of the Affair – Topsy-Turvy – Magnolia – Man on the Moon – Galaxy Quest – The Talented Mr. Ripley – Running Out of Time (Hong Kong) – My Best Fiend (Herzog) – Gohatto, aka Taboo – Beau Travail – Virgin Suicides – East/West – Kikujiro
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER goes from family drama to tranny propaganda. ELECTION by Alexander Payne plays on the petty anxieties of seemingly normal individuals who, against their better judgment, give into temptations with unintended consequences. Payne pretty much patented this formula. RUN LOLA RUN is just having fun, and it’s great fun. THE SIXTH SENSE introduced Shyamalan’s sleight-of-hand, trick or magic, of subtly but profoundly upending our sense of reality, or paradigmatic point of reference. FIGHT CLUB is great filmmaking, bad philosophy. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, like AFTER HOURS, signified a pivotal moment in Scorsese’s career, one of endless possibilities but also crippling paralysis — fittingly, he would later do a film on Howard Hughes afflicted with a similar condition. The (mis)adventures of Nicolas Cage’s character in the-city-that-never-sleeps muddles distinctions between virtue and vice, between revelation and revelry. Like Mike Leigh’s NAKED and Oliver Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS, Scorsese’s film is the closest thing he came to a cry for help. MONONOKE HIME opened a new chapter for Miyazaki with decidedly mixed results. Aimed at a wider audience, adults as well as children, it was neither here nor there. RIDE WITH THE DEVIL removes, layer by layer, the contradictions within the Southern character as one of free-spirited rebellion yet predicated on a system of bondage. MAGNOLIA is self-pity given epic treatment. The result is pathetic and embarrassing but almost unparalleled in cinema history, therapeutism of Biblical proportions. GALAXY QUEST is a parody of what amounts to self-parody, STAR TREK and its ridiculous fandom, and, as such, is redundant, but it’s actually much more, an adventure of self-discovery and redemption, riling us to root for the revitalized crew, all the while adding yet another layer of parody(of all those feel-good movies). RUNNING OUT OF TIME is an awesome display of directorial fireworks from Johnny To who, like David Fincher, usually worked on projects beneath his paygrade. MY BEST FIEND(not ‘friend’) is a double-edged tribute from Werner Herzog to Klaus Kinski, the volatile actor who could light up a scene or burn it all down. Kitano’s tough guy demeanor runs up against a child’s innocence in KIKUJIRO and loses. The kid is kryptonite to Kitano-Man who, shorn of his usual movie powers, dwells on human limitations that can only be eased by sentiment. McTiernan’s remake of THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR is far superior to the original. He also directed the feverish action-adventure THE 13TH WARRIOR, one of the few films comparable to EXCALIBUR. Cronenberg’s EXISTENZ is one of his most elaborate and meticulous constructions. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH led Charlie Kaufman in through the back door as one of cinema’s great eccentrics. One is reminded of the super-geek who resides beyond the closet in REAL GENIUS. Like him or not, Kaufman belongs to a select few that has expanded the dimensionality of film. The closest thing to a physicist of cinema. Lynch surprised his admirers and detractors alike with STRAIGHT STORY, a halcyon moment prior to renewed bursts of creativity that would clinch his place in the pantheon, silencing even the usual naysayers. FELICIA’S JOURNEY seems Egoyan’s stab at Hitchcockisms, appreciative of Hitchcock’s skills but loathing of his obsessions. A case of one artist exploring the reconstituted fictional space based on that of another artist as a crime scene for clues of guilt for psychic terror. Did Hitchcock vicariously committed murder through his movies? Very likely an influence on M. Night Shyamalan. Auteur critics of another era might have undervalued THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY for its lack of directorial personality, as another specimen of what the French New Wavers derided as the ‘cinema of quality’, but good is good, and Minghella’s work is a beautifully crafted yacht that is a pleasure to set sail on over and over. GOHATTO is Nagisa Oshima’s other meditation on the mytho-politics of homo-paranoia, a worthy companion piece to MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE. Endlessly fascinating.
1999 comes down to a final showdown between TOPSY-TURVY and EYES WIDE SHUT. Leigh’s period drama is a magnificent tribute to the artists & performers of a bygone era, minus the haloed nostalgia that usually sidesteps the inequities of the time. While Leigh’s film isn’t a social drama, the problems of the period are felt around the edges, intimating that arts & entertainment are as much escapist luxuries and vanity projects for the privileged as well as wonders that can unite a people and spread joyousness. Be that as it may, Kubrick’s final work has grown in stature over the years as a multi-layered masterpiece of endless fascination. Leigh’s work is a great museum piece, fully realized and set upon the altar, whereas Kubrick’s, like the legend of Jack the Ripper, continues to prowl and haunt the collective imagination. Kubrick for the win.
2000
Boiler Room – Wonder Boys – My Dog Skip – The Ninth Gate – High Fidelity – The Big Kahuna – Sunshine (Szabo) – Time Regained – The Perfect Storm – Almost Famous – Requiem for a Dream – Unbreakable – Pollock – The House of Mirth – O Brother, Where Art Thou? – State and Main – All the Pretty Horses – Sexy Beast – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Platform (China) – The Gleaners and I – Dora-Heita (Ichikawa) – Amores Perros – Werckmeister Harmonies
If Oscars were doggy biscuits, toss one to the canine in MY DOG SKIP. Polanski revisits occultism in THE NINTH GATE, the kind that catapulted his career with ROSEMARY’S BABY. Proficient but by the numbers. ALMOST FAMOUS by Cameron Crowe is like a G-rated Rock film. One can appreciate its semi-autobiographical nostalgia, but it’s like watching “The Partridge Family”. THE BIG KAHUNA isn’t bad for imitation-Mamet. Hollywood, aka Jewish power, intrudes upon a Northeastern town in STATE AND MAIN and either hoodwinks or pays off its dimwit-to-halfwit goy population. Possibly the smartest film of its kind since Albert Brooks’ LOST IN AMERICA. Kon Ichikawa’s DORA-HEITA is a long postponed realization of an early 70s project conceived by four titans of Japanese cinema at a time of crisis. HIGH FIDELITY is the best film on the Gen X experience and one of the best on Rock subculture. At first glance, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM seems way over-the-top, but the sensationalism is actually calibrated to convey the diabolical effects of addiction. If Scorsese’s version of Edith Wharton is a symphony, Terence Davies’ version is a tapestry. What HOUSE OF MIRTH lacks in sumptuousness, it compensates with precision. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU is amazing, at once a loving celebration and a mocking parody of Depression-Era South. Taking a page out of Bob Dylan’s Americana, Coens’ film is a grab bag of reverence and revulsion. UNBREAKABLE shows Shyamalan at the top of his game, like an eight-armed Hindu god multi-tasking. AMORES PERROS is a bit ripe with self-importance — Iñárritu could learn a thing or two about humor from Bunuel and Kusturica to lend his films some levity, which is like air to bread — but a powerful tale about lives sliding into or struggling out of the pit. A post-ideological film, a vision of End of History marked by corruption and poverty than liberty and prosperity, it dramatizes the difficulty of redemption past its expiration date. SUNSHINE, Szabo’s multi-generational saga of the peaks and valleys of a Jewish-Hungarian family modeled on his own, was clearly meant to be his magnum opus, and it’s great in a way. But why the casting of British and American actor? Perhaps, alienated from Hungary, where his tribe was met with much grief, the film was directed at the global-Jewish audience than a Hungarian one, the point being Hungarian Jews are foremost a part of the world Jewish community than members of a gentile nationality.
Bela Tarr’s dark and ominous WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES would have been the top pick for 2000 if not for Raul Ruiz’s TIME REGAINED, one of the rarely successful(as opposed to merely respectable) adaptations of great literature. It would have been feat enough to convey Proust’s exteriority, but Ruiz did so with interiority as well.
2001
Memento – Y Tu Mama Tambien – A.I: Artificial Intelligence – Ghost World – Apocalypse Now Redux – The Others – Jeepers Creepers – Mulholland Dr. – Waking Life – Donnie Darko – Amelie – The Man Who Wasn’t There – Heist – In the Bedroom – The Royal Tenenbaums – Gosford Park – Black Hawk Down – The Cat’s Meow – Last Orders (Schepisi) – Beijing Bicycle – All About Lily Chou-Chou – Pistol Opera (Suzuki) – Friend (Korea) – Take Care of My Cat (Korea)
JEEPERS CREEPERS is a work of a pervert who came up with at least one cool idea for horror. DONNIE DARKO is more self-mystifying than mysterious. Mamet’s HEIST is all mechanics but way smarter than most in the genre. IN THE BEDROOM strives for significance on the nature of man, how dark impulses may be activated in a time of crisis to restore one’s sense of meaning as a man, father and husband. A crypto-honor-culture film, it’s as disturbing as STRAW DOGS. What worked for teens(in RUSHMORE) doesn’t quite work for grownups in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. What’s endearing in young ones isn’t so among adults. BLACK HAWK DOWN is lean mean action. If saving a soldier was an angelic quest in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, one worthy of any sacrifice, similar objectives lead to an ever widening hellhole in Ridley Scott’s movie. BEIJING BICYCLE is a worthy variation on De Sica’s neo-realist classic. TAKE CARE OF MY CAT is a Korean ‘chick flick’, one of the best of its kind. APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX added around 90 minutes to the theatrical version and is richer for it. FRIEND the Korean gangster drama is intense and moving. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is still Alfonso Cuaron’s finest work, a deceptive excursion into hedonism with truths and meanings lurking in the shadows.
The big three of the year are Zwigoff’s GHOST WORLD, Spielberg’s A.I: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, and Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DR. As wonderful as Zwigoff comedy-drama is, Spielberg’s best work(by way of Kubrick) and Lynch’s biggest game-changer since ERASERHEAD are far and away the greatest cinematic odysseys of 2001. A two-way tie.
2002
The Count of Monte Cristo (Reynolds) – Mothman Prophecies – Panic Room – The Lady and the Duke – Star Wars: Attack of the Clones – About a Boy – Insomnia (Nolan) – Thirteen Conversations about One Thing – The Bourne Identity – Lilo & Stitch – Minority Report – K-19: The Widowmaker – Signs – The Rules of Attraction – Auto Focus – Femme Fatale – 25th Hour – Gangs of New York – Catch Me If You Can – The Pianist – Spider (Cronenberg) – Together (China) – Twilight Samurai – Adaptation (Jonze-Kaufman) – Distant (Turkey) – Safe Conduct (France) – Ararat
ARARAT is Egoyan’s last film of any artistic integrity. A kind of counter-SCHINDLER’S LIST, a narrative-dialogue on historiography than a you-are-there guilt-trip for goyim(and self-adoration for Jews), it prods for meaning instead of merely pressing a point. However, it’s marred by idiotic proto-globohomo nonsense, perhaps on the supposition that Ottoman-style militarism and Bible-based ‘homophobia’ can be construed as two sides of the same murderous coin. In the Current Year when homos are among the most zealous participants in the genocidal Zionist imperium, has Egoyan woken up to reality yet? THE RULES OF ATTRACTION riffs on some of the nastiest a-holes this side of Babylon, but it’s virtuoso filmmaking. Kevin Reynolds’ THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO may be the best adaptation of the novel. Fincher’s cinematic toolkit is on full display in the architectural thriller PANIC ROOM, an empty but impressive exercise. SIGNS is effective as suspense, dumb as premise. THE BOURNE IDENTITY is both taut and supple, like an MMA fighter. LILO & STITCH bursts at the seams with inventiveness. STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES is mostly special effects, the most astounding in the series. THE LADY AND THE DUKE by Rohmer is ideologically reactionary and formalistically experimental. It sort of reminded me of the “Lady and the Tramp” monologue in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. Kathyrn Bigelow’s K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER is the best submarine film since DAS BOOT and features Harrison Ford’s best performance. MINORITY REPORT is too hold-onto-your-hats and tug-at-your-heartstrings to be the intellectual sci-fi it aspires to be, but it’s chockful of wonders. MOTHMAN PROPHECIES is the one time Pellington rose to the occasion to deliver an outstanding work.
The remake of INSOMNIA, superior to the Norwegian original and still Nolan’s finest film, is the winner for 2002.
2003
City of God (Brazil) – Identity (Mangold) – American Splendor – Open Range – Matchstick Men – Lost in Translation – Anything Else – School of Rock – Mystic River – Matrix Revolutions – Master and Commander – The Last Samurai – Cold Mountain – Best of Youth (Italy) – The Return (Russia) – Bright Leaves (McElwee) – Memories of Murder (Korea) – Barbarian Invasions – Elephant (Van Sant) – Crimson Gold (Iran) – Evil (Sweden)
IDENTITY is trashy but tricky. ANYTHING ELSE was a bitter pill for those accustomed to Woody Allen’s ‘harmless’ persona. SCHOOL OF ROCK is a sell-out for Linklater but also a sly satire on the gentrification of rebellion. THE LAST SAMURAI is Tom Cruise incarnate: dumb, pretty, earnest, intense. Anti-Aryan Swedish school drama EVIL is artful propaganda and wishful fantasy, i.e. violence is bad except when an Aryan kid beats up other Aryan kids in instinctive deference to a quasi-Jewish kid. Van Sant’s ELEPHANT is a formalistic inquiry into the Columbine high school shooting. CITY OF GOD, set in the crime-infested favelas of Brazil, reeking of death but exuberantly alive, plays images like music, something akin to samba-montage, or sambontage. MASTER AND COMMANDER is a historical adventure-drama done to perfection. The deceptively episodic structure of LOST IN TRANSLATION winds to one of the very special moments in cinema. AMERICAN SPLENDOR, though not the first to juxtapose fictionalization with its real-life counterpart, has both the audacity of an experiment and the familiarity of comedy.
The top film of 2003 is the Korean crime-drama MEMORIES OF MURDER that grapples with themes pertaining to class and region, all tied up with egotism.
2004
Spartan (Mamet) – Napoleon Dynamite – The Terminal (Spielberg) – Before Sunset – The Bourne Supremacy – The Village (Shyamalan) – Collateral – Wicker Park – Shaun of the Dead – The Incredibles – Alexander (Stone) – Million Dollar Baby (Oscar winner) – Beyond the Sea – The Aviator – The World (China) – Hana and Alice – Nobody Knows (Japan) – Hidden Blade (Japan) – Pusher II (Refn) – Downfall (Germany) – Tropical Malady
The Mormon NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and the manga-like HANA AND ALICE are oddball films, misfit sensibilities rendered wholesome. THE TERMINAL is another allegory on the Jewish anxiety of exile by Spielberg. Stone’s stillborn ALEXANDER, like JFK and THE DOORS, is a labor of love gone wrong. Mann’s COLLATERAL mythologizes the twilight of the White Male in a world gone multicultural. It works as a more stoic version of the whiny FALLING DOWN. MILLION DOLLAR BABY honors a fallen warrior’s final wish, death over decay. HIDDEN BLADE is another exquisite work of samurai nostalgia from Yoji Yamada. Shyamalan’s THE VILLAGE is overly conceptual but with some beautiful passages. THE AVIATOR is Scorsese’s stab at the Great American Movie but, like Howard Hughes gargantuan airplane, barely lifts off the ground. SHAUN OF THE DEAD is one funny zombie-horror parody. WICKER PARK is a beautifully realized remake of L’APPARTEMENT. Linklater’s BEFORE SUNSET works better than its predecessor. It feels like life than a hypothesis. TROPICAL MALADY is a strange one. If Buddha were a modern-day cosmopolitan meditating on the timeless appeal of the exotic, one of his trances might resemble Weerasethakul’s film. BEYOND THE SEA is a triumph for Kevin Spacey as actor and director, a new twist on the biopic, a work of deconstruction than construction on the myth of celebrity. NOBODY KNOWS is Kore-eda’s first great film, a calm but steadfast observation of children abandoned by their mother and left to their own devices. The title of Mamet’s SPARTAN is ironic. The Spartans of history were proud warriors who defended their order with fanatical zeal. The spartan soldier of the film is essentially a rootless mercenary sent on an errand against unknown enemies in service to secretive tiers of power. It’s like a lucid nightmare, a useful addendum to HOMICIDE, Mamet’s best work.
The winner of 2004 is DOWNFALL, one of the best historical-war dramas. It does for Hitler’s bunker what DAS BOOT did for the U-Boat.
2005
Kingdom of Heaven – War of the Worlds – Capote – A History of Violence – Oliver Twist (Polanski) – The Squid and the Whale – King Kong (Jackson) – Munich – The Descent – Sunflower (China) – The Sun (Russia) – Election & Election 2 (Hong Kong) – Chronicles of Narnia – Grizzly Man – C.R.A.Z.Y (French-Canada)
CHRONICLES OF NARNIA abounds in what Peter Jackson’s LOTR lacked: A sense of wonderment. Jackson did better with KING KONG, a more childlike fantasy. THE DESCENT is trashy but exciting. ELECTION and its sequel provided Johnny To with material worthy of his talent. The subject of Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN is crazier than Klaus Kinski. THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is a oft-but-better-told tale of children bearing the brunt of their parents’ career-centered egotism. KINGDOM OF HEAVEN’s final verdict on Ridley Scott is ‘good eye, no brains’. Personal turmoil amidst political turbulence makes for a deeply moving family drama in SUNFLOWER from China. Has there ever been a bigger workaholic than Spielberg? In 1982, he did E.T. and POLTERGEIST. In 1993, JURASSIC PARK and SCHINDLER’S LIST. In 1997, LOST WORLD and AMISTAD. In 2005, he directed both MUNICH, excellently crafted but politically disingenuous, and WAR OF THE WORLDS, which drew key elements from Lean’s DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and served as a counterpoint to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.
Spielberg would have won for 2005 but for C.R.A.Z.Y, a French-Canadian coming-of-age family drama about a fruitkin who must acknowledge his own nature before making peace with the world(as a precondition for the world hopefully making peace with his kind). The film’s big-hearted humanism gives everyone his due. It asks for the homo’s place in the world, not to be the center of it. The character of the father is especially memorable.
2006
Tristan and Isolde – United 93 – Art School Confidential – A Scanner Darkly – Little Miss Sunshine – World Trade Center – The Illusionist – Idiocracy – The Last King of Scotland – Flags of Our Fathers – The Prestige – Babel – The Fountain (Aronofsky) – Apocalypto – Letters from Iwo Jima – Once (UK) – Love and Honor (Japan) – Black Book (Verhoeven) – Hana (Japan)
Kevin Reynolds’ TRISTAN AND ISOLDE is about youthful romance without pandering to youth. Complacent Western passengers find themselves in a deer-in-the-headlight situation in UNITED 93. Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY comes closest to relaying the warped mind-verse of Philip K. Dick. Aronofsky’s THE FOUNTAIN has big ideas but only half thought. HANA, Kore-eda’s beta-male revisionism of samurai ethos, is a bit annoying but ultimately affecting. APOCALYPTO is mostly Hollywood-style action but with some authenticity(or ‘authenticism’) thrown in. ONCE is about the daily grind of a creative soul, a singer-songwriter, and the euphoria of the occasional breakthrough. LOVE AND HONOR is the third and last of Yoji Yamada’s retro-samurai dramas. THE PRESTIGE is overly complicated, and BABEL is overly complicating. IDIOCRACY has too much fun with what it’s satirizing. The dystopian future is rather like Jeff Spicoli of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMENT HIGH: Dumb but endearing. Zwigoff’s ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL has less consistency of tone and more reliance on caricature than GHOST WORLD. The crowd-pleasing LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a deft mix of reality checks and derring-do, but a bit too calculated. WORLD TRADE CENTER questions the cult of heroism in the face of events beyond anyone’s control. THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND is more entertaining than the Planet-of-the-Apes reboots.
The three most notable films of 2006 are Eastwood’s pair of Pacific War films, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, examining the behind-the-scenes mechanisms of mythmaking, and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, presenting a counter-perspective, and another film set during World War II but in Europe, Verhoeven’s dizzyingly multi-faceted THE BLACK BOOK. It’s a three-way tie.
2007
Zodiac – 300 – Rescue Dawn – Sunshine (Boyle) – Assassination of Jesse James – Into the Wild (Penn) – Michael Clayton – American Gangster – No Country for Old Men (Oscar winner) – The Mist – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Youth without Youth (Coppola) – There Will be Blood – This Is England – Blind Mountain (China) – Alexandra (Russia) – Hot Fuzz – Katyn – Guru (India) – 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days – In the City of Sylvia – Dharm (India)
300 is Neocon war porn, an effective recruiting tool. THE MIST makes the most of a dumb idea. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY inspires thoughts on the meaning of existence, healing powers of the creative spirit, and limitations of imagination, as well as on the nature of cinema itself, a kind of mind-eye to an audience entombed in darkness. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH was Coppola’s attempt to reignite the spirit of personal filmmaking but to no avail. BLIND MOUNTAIN from China is a powerful docudrama on the subject of women abducted into villages starved of brides. A reminder of the fragility of rights without the protective power of the law, i.e. for all the repressive aspects of the Chinese state, existence beyond its reach could be worse. THIS IS ENGLAND associates British nationalism with skinheads and such dregs but is a powerful dramatization of lower class angst. HOT FUZZ is another brilliantly done comedy by Edgar Wright. IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA is lovely, possibly the gentlest of stalking films. DHARM is a message film, heavy-handed at times, but with a message well worth repeating. RESCUE DAWN is Herzog in conventional mode and one of his best works, showing that straining-for-seriousness isn’t necessarily the best formula for art. It breaks ice with Americanism as simple-minded but satisfying on some fundamental human level. That chocolate bar sure looks more appetizing than the saliva-fermented brew in the Amazonian jungles in which Herzog and Kinski were once prisoners of their own egos. Danny Boyle’s SUNSHINE is only half good, but what’s good is very good. Fincher’s talent was finally matched with substantive material: ZODIAC is his best work. MICHAEL CLAYTON is diminished by familiar tropes but is a superior corporate thriller with fine performances, especially among the baddies. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is THE TERMINATOR in the borderlands, with an angel-of-death of non-descript ethnicity in relentless pursuit.
Wajda’s KATYN, Penn’s INTO THE WILD, and Dominik’s THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES constitute a three-way tie. Wajda’s film makes SCHINDLER’S LIST look like a children’s movie. It encourages thought than pushes buttons. Penn’s film conveys both the pure spirit and delusional madness of its idealistic adventurer. Dominik’s Southern(or southern-Western) embarks on a slow but fascinating investigation(not unlike in KATYN) into the contradictions that gave rise to the legend of Jesse James.
2008
Cloverfield – In Bruges – Diary of the Dead – City of Men – Snow Angels – Funny Games – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – The Happening (Shyamalan) – Tropic Thunder – W. (Stone) – Changeling – Twilight – Frost/Nixon – Che – Gran Torino – The Wrestler – Hunger (UK) – The Class (France) – Gomorrah (Italy) – Departures (Japan) – Still Walking (Japan) – Flame & Citron – Kabei – Elite Squad (Brazil)
DIARY OF THE DEAD proves the rule: Zombie horror works as reboot, not as sequel. The shock factor, not the gore, is the key element. CITY OF MEN is a gentler(relatively speaking) and more thoughtful extension of CITY OF GOD. Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES is an American remake of his European original. Just when the West is being inundated with anti-white ideology, multiculturalism, and immigration-invasion, Haneke’s idea of threat to civilization is a couple of preppy white males as evil incarnate. Was Haneke implying that Western Civilization, an outgrowth of the white will-to-power, is intrinsically antithetical to humanity, a variation on Susan Sontag’s “white race is the cancer of history”? In other words, the two tormentors may be ghoulish personifications of the ‘violence inherent in the system’. Vile but triggering. THE HAPPENING is brilliantly executed but fails to reach a satisfying conclusion. TROPIC THUNDER is one of the smartest of the dumb comedies. It didn’t go full retard. Oliver Stone’s W. is surprisingly empathetic given the disdain for its subject. In the film, Dubya is too dumb to be evil but dumb enough to be duped by it. TWILIGHT has a ludicrous premise but a luscious romanticism. ELITE SQUAD has the balance of violent thrills and social critique. THE WRESTLER’s sublime ending almost elevates it to greatness. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is a perfect illustration of Spielberg’s genius. It’s like going through the most challenging obstacle course with the dexterity of an acrobat and the grace of a ballet dancer. A constant and ceaseless flow of movement over every barrier, around every corner, through every crevice. Amazing.
It’s a tie between CLOVERFIELD and STILL WALKING. The former has the dumbest movie premise — space aliens rampaging around NY as ‘found footage'(like the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY) — , which makes the outcome all the more astonishing as a heartrending tale of love, friendship, and sacrifice. Incredibly enough, it has the aura of a romantic quest. The millennials never looked so good. Kore-eda’s family drama is his best work, one he’s unlikely ever to top.
2009
Up – Moon (Duncan Jones) – The Hurt Locker – A Serious Man – Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – Twilight: New Moon – Me and Orson Welles – An Education (Scherfig) – White Material (France) – Tetro (Coppola)
MOON has more brains and heart than most sci-fi but could have done with a more engaging actor. Herzog’s BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS is preferable to Ferrara’s original that’s like a nightstick up the arse, or sinner porn. ME AND ORSON WELLES and AN EDUCATION are about smart wide-eyed youths coming to awareness through disillusionment but not without hard-earned wisdom. WHITE MATERIAL gauges the tensions between European intuition towards order and African instinct for chaos. Grim and dispiriting. TWILIGHT: NEW MOON is the best in the series, a triumph of style and mood.
The best film of 2009 is A SERIOUS MAN, one of the Coen brothers’ most personal, endearing, and challenging works.
2010
Shutter Island – A Prophet (France) – Ondine – Wild Grass (Resnais) – Inception – L’affaire Farewell, aka Farewell (France) – The American – Devil (Dowdle) – Norwegian Wood – 127 Hours – Tron: Legacy – Casino Jack True Grit (Coens) – Cave of Forgotten Dreams – Poetry (Korea) – Despicable Me – Senna (documentary)
A PROPHET, a French prison-gangster film, chronicles the shifting power balance between aging whites and growing numbers of North Africans. Kevin Spacey is miscast in CASINO JACK, nevertheless one of the more informative movies about the collusion of business and politics. Conceived but not directed by M. Night Shyamalan, DEVIL has all the ingredients for effective horror. 127 HOURS is, if nothing else, a gripping cautionary tale about man and nature, which in an instant can go from heaven to hell. DESPICABLE ME is wonderful for kids. Perhaps, no category of film has benefited as much from the advent of the digital camera as the documentary. CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS and SENNA are superb examples. George Clooney can play it cool but not cold, a handicap in a role of a killer, but THE AMERICAN is briskly paced and well-crafted. SHUTTER ISLAND is too somber for what is really B-movie material. INCEPTION’s elaborate construction and plot complications are, amazingly enough, grown from a seed of an idea, the purported inner logic of dreams, much like the beanstalk grows from a bean. Though certainly impressive, the movie suffers from questionable casting and overblown action scenes, the kind better left to Michael Bay. TRUE GRIT is a finer film than the original in every way except for its male lead and the villain. John Wayne and Robert Duvall already did it to perfection.
The two most remarkable films of 2010 are TRON: LEGACY that features some of the most audacious sci-fi concepts and special effects and L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL, one of the most intelligent political thriller-dramas in a long time. A two-way tie.
2011
The Conspirator – Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 – A Dangerous Method – The Adventures of TinTin – War Horse – A Separation (Iran) – Elena (Russia) – This Must Be the Place (Sorrentino) – Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – Turin Horse – Blackthorn – 11 Flowers (China) – The Day – Limitless
2011 doesn’t contain a single film that is truly great, even though ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA tries its darned best to be one. THE DAY is a variation of zombie horror with flesh-eating zombies replaced with cannibals. First-rate indie action. WAR HORSE is Spielberg’s tribute to John Ford, a solid mini-epic in which the innocent bond between boy and beast is tested by poverty and war. There is a subtext however: Goyim are to Jews what horses(and cattle) are to humans. Tireless Spielberg made another film, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, a technical marvel but not much else. THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a Jewish revenge film, rather tasteless to preferable to Egoyan’s latter-day buckets of swill. It says prodigal Jews need to put away childish things and bear the torch of tradition. TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PT. 1 is nuts but great eye-candy. TURIN HORSE is another grim reaper of a film from Bela Tarr. THE CONSPIRATOR is a surprisingly nuanced historical drama from Robert Redford, a director most associated with Liberal sermonizing or nostalgia peddling.
We’ll settle for A SEPARATION for the best of 2011. It’s a compelling film about personal crises, moral compromise, and class tensions in Iran.
2012
John Carter – Footnote (Israel) – The Hunger Games – Damsels in Distress – Moonrise Kingdom – Cosmopolis – Robot & Frank – Resident Evil: Retribution – Lincoln – Life of Pi – The Hunt (Vinterberg) – The Master – Snow White and the Huntsman – Hatfields & McCoys
JOHN CARTER, a total flop for Disney, is actually wildly imaginative. In FOOTNOTE from Israel, father-son relations are put through the wringers of academic controversy. Somewhat comparable to Coens’ A SERIOUS MAN. Milla Jovovich was born to star in RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION, a work of first-rate trash. P. T. Anderson’s THE MASTER craves masterpiece status, but you can’t always get what you want. ROBOT & FRANK imagines the criminal possibilities of robotics and artificial intelligence. The old and the shiny new team up for some hijinks. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is picture-perfect though perhaps story-stupid. THE HUNGER GAMES is surprisingly effective as pop satire. MOONRISE KINGDOM shows Anderson is better with precocious kids than childlike adults. LIFE OF PI is a bit pompous but a feast for the eyes and some food for thought as well. HATFIELDS & MCCOYS by the two Kevins, Costner and Reynolds, is one of their finest achievements, a tale of two clans torn apart by wounded egos of their respective patriarchs.
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS and THE HUNT tie for the best of 2012. Stillman’s comedy is pure gem, about as perfect as a film could be. Vinterberg’s modern-day witch hunt story is one of the most gut-wrenching, a demonstration of how easily life can be upended by an aspersion in a therapeutic nanny state. Yet, it’s not about heroes and villains as the characters cannot possibly know what we the audience knows. Put in their positions, denied the omniscience of the film’s perspective, we might feel the same way. In that sense, the most depressing aspect of the film isn’t about guilt-or-innocence but the loneliness of one’s truth that can never be proven to the world.
2013
Phil Spector – Oblivion – Frances Ha – Byzantium – The Way Way Back – The World’s End – Blue Jasmine – August: Osage County – Rush – Gravity – The Counselor – Ender’s Game – Inside Llewyn Davis – American Hustle – Wolf of Wall Street – Trance (Boyle) – The Act of Killing – A Field in England – Under the Skin – Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas – The Great Beauty (Sorrentino) – In a World… – Like Father Like Son (Japan) – Adoration (Fontaine) – Kings of Summer – The German Doctor – C.O.G – Joe (Green)
2013 was widely heralded as annus mirabilis for cinema. PHIL SPECTOR has Mamet as a fellow Jew’s dramatic defender, i.e. while not claiming innocence for the music legend, it’s implied he became a shit because the world shat on him. It carries the bias of the one-man show: In the land of the muted, the madman who talks is king. THE WAY WAY BACK, a coming-of-age comedy-drama, has a good heart, with a loser-grownup as mentor to a downbeat kid. RUSH is the best thing Ron Howard ever did. Ridley Scott’s THE COUNSELOR is a steelier adaptation of Cormac McCarthy than NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. It’s chills than thrills. While both films strike terror in the viewer, THE COUNSELOR’s relative lack of action offers no respite into escapism. While everyone is doomed in both stories, the chase in the Coens’ film at least lends the illusion of choice and freedom, whereas Scott’s film says there’s nothing you can do when the noose tightens; no way to run, just sit and accept your fate. ENDER’S GAME is kiddie sci-fi with clever scenarios, fantastic special effects, and ultimately something to mull over. AMERICAN HUSTLE is O Russell’s GOODFELLAS Lite. Danny Boyle’s TRANCE gets plot-twisted into a knot. THE ACT OF KILLING is a grim but illuminating documentary about the massacres in Indonesia following the aborted communist coup in 1965. Will its Jewish director tackle the subject of the Palestinian tragedy under Zionism? Easy to point fingers, harder to look in the mirror. A FIELD IN ENGLAND is nuts but visually far out. UNDER THE SKIN strains for significance, the result being obfuscation than meaning. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON is lesser Kore-eda but touching just the same. ADORATION(aka ADORE) is rather silly, not to mention tasteless, with its younger-men-and-older-women angle(and crypto-incest fantasy), but has a certain mythic resonance. THE GERMAN DOCTOR is a superior Nazi-fugitive film with a worthy adversary who’s always a step or two ahead of the game. C.O.G begins innocuously enough but slowly builds to a climax too angst-ridden for catharsis. Sometimes, acts without harmful intent can do the most harm, a lesson learned the hard way by the conceited or self-absorbed. The ‘hero’ of the story leaves his comfort zone to see the other America but remains stuck inside his psychological bubble. Nicolas Cage’s wild ways with the emotional thermostat in JOE is a sight to behold. THE WORLD’S END is Edgar Wright at the top of his game, like catching everything thrown at him and arranging them into a neat pile. BLUE JASMINE is one of Woody Allens’ best, with a plum role for Cate Blanchett. A regional comedy-drama, New York vs San Francisco(than Los Angeles in ANNIE HALL), as well as a class-conscious one, the big earners vs the working class, it’s one of the few times Allen at least half-way empathized with those outside his social and cultural milieu, the type of people derided as ‘the cast of THE GODFATHER’ in ANNIE HALL. Allen still despises them but admits the rich and the privileged are no better. As special effects go, GRAVITY is almost peerless, but the plot is little more than an illustration of Murphy’s Law. WOLF OF WALL STREET lacks even the pretense of a cautionary tale about greed. Whether this makes the film more honest or nihilistic is up to the viewer. KINGS OF SUMMER is as good as summer itself.
The top honors for 2013 are a tie between the Coens’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and Pallières’ AGE OF UPRISING: THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL KOHLHAAS. The Coens’ film seems a bit opaque and off-center, but those very qualities sustain a strange ambiance throughout. In a way a period film, it nevertheless alienates the viewer from the period presented and, as such, is devoid of the nostalgia one usually associates with the genre. Lleywn Davis isn’t so much a representative figure of the period as a singular individual of circumstances beyond his control. Disaffected with his (ex)lover, his peers & patrons, the businessmen, and his dementia-ridden working class father, the kind of people the folk movement supposedly gives voice to, Davis is a man adrift in space and time than an archetypical figure of a particular cultural moment. Among Coens’ films, it casts the strangest spell. Pallières’ version of the Kohlhaas tragedy is like a gothic revenge Western. About as depressing as a film can be but deeply rewarding.
2014
The Lego Movie – RoboCop – Grand Budapest Hotel – Noah – Birdman (Oscar winner) – Inherent Vice – American Sniper – Cold in July – Boyhood – Whiplash – Coming Home (Yimou) – Fort Tilden – In Order of Disappearance (Norway) – Before I Disappear – Black Sea – The Drop – Kid Cannabis
The ROBOCOP remake is near-perfect pop satire. Unlike the contemptuous original, it respects the intelligence of the audience. Aronofsky’s NOAH is a squall of a movie, wildly uneven and laughable in parts, but undoubtedly a work of big brains and bigger balls. The psychological affliction in Zhang Yimou’s COMING HOME seems medically dubious, but the film is a worthy reminder of the traumatizing impact of the Cultural Revolution. AMERICAN SNIPER was a big hit among conservatives, but its most admirable character is one who doubts the official narrative. And the manner in which the ‘hero’ was killed raises questions about America’s gun-obsession. Was it really sound ‘therapy’ to treat soldiers psychologically wounded by war with sessions involving firearms? Was the war hero’s demise really all that different from those of Steve Irwin and Timothy Dexter, aka Grizzly Man. They all died doing what they loved, but was it wise? BLACK SEA is a gripping action thriller inside a submarine, an undersea coffin as far as I’m concerned.
For 2014, it’s a tie between KID CANNABIS(directed by John Stockwell) and BEFORE I DISAPPEAR(directed by Shawn Christensen), both outrageous adventures of losers rising to the occasion to pull off crazy stunts. If young lads are up for repeated anal-searches across the Canadian border to score some weed, now that’s dedication! Christensen’s film begins like a double act pairing an immature adult stuck with a precocious child, almost a genre unto itself, but it takes a strange turn as a story of self-discovery that stylistically takes a page out of the Bunuel playbook.
2015
Maps to the Stars – Tomorrowland – Love & Mercy – Ant-Man – Bridge of Spies – Room (Abrahamson) – Slow West – Wolf Totem – Blackcoat’s Daughter – Sunset Song – And Then There Were None – Black Mass – Cop Car – The Finest Hours – Into the Forest – The Witch – Blood Sucking Bastards – The Revenant
Spielberg’s BRIDGE OF SPIES rarely rises above middlebrow conventions but works beautifully within those bounds. Like the Chinese film BLIND MOUNTAIN, Lenny Abrahamson’s ROOM, almost unbearable to watch, is owed gratitude for reminding us of the fragility of what we take for granted, plain and simple freedom. THE REVENANT is visually magnificent but otherwise forgettable. The odd concept behind LOVE & MERCY, of having two actors play Brian Wilson at different stages of his adult life, makes for an interesting but not necessarily better biopic. The physical disparities between the actors are so glaring that the result feels like two films stitched together. Worse, there isn’t a hint of experimentalism that might have halfway justified the approach. THE FINEST HOURS starts a bit soapy but gradually swells into an epic of heroism. The oddball SLOW WEST, for all its funny moments, is drawn from a deep well of romanticism. TOMORROWLAND and ANT-MAN are dizzyingly inventive, leaving no stone unturned in their imaginative potential.
The best film of 2015 is BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER, possibly the only horror film delving into the state of being in love with the Devil, as opposed to merely being possessed.
2016
Hail, Caesar! – Risen (Reynolds) – Elvis & Nixon – Hell or High Water – American Pastoral – Arrival – Moana – Paterson – Silence (Scorsese) – After the Storm (Japan) – The Duelist (Russia) – Split – Detour – Neon Demon – Hacksaw Ridge
Kevin Reynolds’ RISEN is a superior film on the Jesus phenomenon, a surprisingly moving one(even for nonbelievers). AMERICAN PASTORAL is a searing portrait of lives torn asunder by seismic changes of the Sixties. The father is a Job-like character who strives to do right by everyone, but things fall apart around him. Was the poison seed in his marrying a ‘shikse’? SPLIT was the second film in Shyamalan’s remarkable(though not entirely happy) comeback, a return to form. Some of the gore is unnecessary, and the villain has Too Many personalities, stretching credulity even for a horror-thriller. The beguiling NEON DEMON is one of the trashiest art films of the 21st century, spellbinding in its blood sacrifice of an enchantress by soulless vamps but also shamelessly pretentious as a faux critique of nihilism as the logical culmination of narcissism. HACKSAW RIDGE begins weak but gains in strength in the boot camp scenes. Then, it goes off the cliff with violence so relentless as to be mind-numbing, even a bit funny, like the war movie parody TROPIC THUNDER. The use of gore, once justified as a shocking/sobering corrective to white-washed Hollywood movies, has since worn out its welcome. Now a staple in just about everything, serious and unserious movies alike, not to mention video-games, it hardly warrants continued moral legitimacy. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was the last time it really worked, not least because successive movies and TV shows beat it to death, rendering it as ubiquitous as the TV Western that made everyone grow tired of the genre.
The year produced two great films. HAIL, CAESAR!, a Big Idea film by the Coens, but it’s edged out by SILENCE, the first of Scorsese’s mature masterpieces.
2017
The Lost City of Z – My Cousin Rachel – Baby Driver – Dunkirk – Mother! – American Made – Blade Runner 2049 – The Florida Project – England Is Mine – Maze (Ireland) – Journey’s End – Unknown Soldier (Finland) – Better Watch Out – Bullet Head – Logan Lucky
Nolan’s DUNKIRK is an ennobling tribute to the British effort, military and civilian alike, that pooled all available manpower and resources to evacuate soldiers besieged on all sides by the Wehrmacht. The most moving moment isn’t of battles but the mere sight of British shores as one of the rescue missions reaches completion. Granted, films like this would be more interesting with some context, i.e. Germany hadn’t wanted war with Britain and went relatively easy on the British stranded on the French beach, a rare moment of magnanimity among the combatants, as well as another case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. The film is most depressing in the context of what has since happened to Britain. Is there really a point to commemorating Britain’s defense of the homeland in World War II when it has virtually surrendered to endless waves of non-white foreigners? It’s like a man who just sold his daughter to white slavery singing paeans to his grandfather who fought off marauders to protect his family. DUNKIRK shows the Brits would rather refight old wars in fiction than join the current struggle to save their motherland.
An even better war film is the Finnish UNKNOWN SOLDIER that chronicles the series of Winter Wars against the Soviet Union in rich detail and with riveting action. It’s rife with memorable personalities and gripping drama. In most years, it would easily be the best film, but MOTHER! by Darron Aronofsky ranks even higher. Rarely has cinema been as powerful as this. One of the most electrifying since RASHOMON.
2018
American Animals – Hereditary – Roma – The Mule – At Eternity’s Gate – They Shall Not Grow Old – Prospect – Black 47 – The Favourite – Freaks
Why doesn’t the middle class Mexican family in ROMA ever clean the dog shit in the garage before steering the car inside? Beautiful ending though. THE FAVOURITE is one of the best-looking costume dramas since BARRY LYNDON. Otherwise, a nasty piece of work, hardly surprising given the director: The demented Greek. FREAKS is batshit crazy but genuinely inspired.
AMERICAN ANIMALS is the best of the year. The pioneering spirit of early America is reawakened in a group of college students who embark on a heist(or hunt) for a book by one of the great pioneer-artists of American history.
2019
Glass – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – The Irishman – Ford v Ferrari – Parasite – Sound of Metal – Brightburn – Cold Pursuit
The big three of 2019 are the films by Tarantino, Bong, and Scorsese. Each is a worthy candidate for the best of the year. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is by far Tarantino’s best film since his knockout debut with RESERVOIR DOGS. At long last, signs of a mature master but with youthful spirit intact. Bong’s film is a biting satire, brilliantly realized.
But, THE IRISHMAN wins as one of Scorsese’s deepest works. Scorsese’s films have been many things, worthy of all manners of praise, but rarely have they been as profound as this. If Tarantino took his first steps toward maturity, Scorsese completed the journey with one of his greatest works.
2020
Kajillionaire – Sputnik – Copshop
What was the best film of 2020? Not a particularly good year as I recall. We’ll just go with SPUTNIK.
2021
Pig – Dune part 1 – Drive My Car (Japan) – Come True – Lamb – Shadow in the Clouds – South of Heaven
The Icelandic LAMB is likely the best of 2021.
2022
The Northman – The Fabelmans – Triangle of Sadness – Emily the Criminal – The Menu – Strawberry Mansion
We’ll go with THE FABELMANS, as exhilarating as it is exasperating.
2023
Oppenheimer – Brooklyn 45 – Butcher’s Crossing – Gods of Mexico – Monolith
OPPENHEIMER wins. It isn’t exactly great but gets an A for effort.
2024
Before Dawn – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – American Star – Handling the Undead – Last Stop in Yuma County – Trap – Oddity – Strange Darling
YOU decide for 2024.
