Top Tens

1936

1.     Modern Times (Chaplin)
2.     After the Thin Man (Van Dyke)
3.     My Man Godfrey (la Cava)
4.     Fury (Lang)
5.     Dodsworth (Wyler)
6.     The Story of a Cheat (Guitry)
7.     Libeled Lady (Conway)
8.     Partie de Campagne (Jean Renoir)
9.    The Prisoner of Shark Island (Ford)
10.  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra)
 
Honorable Mentions: The Lower Depths (Renoir), The Petrified Forest (Mayo),Swing Time (Stevens), The Only Son (Ozu), The Plough and the Stars (Ford), Things to Come (Menzies), Come and Get It (Hawks and Wyler), The Milky Way (McCarey), The Devil-Doll (Browning), Sisters of Gion (Mizoguchi), Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer), Secret Agent (Hitchcock), Sabotage (Hitchcock).

1949:

1.       Late Spring (Ozu)
2.       White Heat (Walsh)
3.       Reign of Terror (Mann) 
4.       The Third Man (Reed) 
5.       Adam’s Rib (Cukor) 
6.       Battleground (Wellman) 
7.       Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer) 
8.       Obsession (Dmytryk) 
9.       They Live By Night (Ray) 
10.   She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford)

Honorable Mentions (Alphabetical Order):  Africa Screams (Barton),  The Big Steal (Siegel), Bitter Rice (De Santis), Border Incident (Mann), Caught (Ophuls), Colorado Territory (Walsh), Criss Cross (Siodmak), Flamingo Road (Curtiz), The Great Madcap (Bunuel), The Heiress (Wyler), House of Strangers (Mankiewicz), I Shot Jesse James (Fuller), I Was a Male War Bride (Hawks), The Inspector General (Koster), Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown), A Letter to Three Wives (Mankiewicz), On the Town (Kelly and Donen), The Quiet Duel (Kurosawa), The Reckless Moment (Ophuls), Sands of Iwo Jima (Dwan), The Set-Up (Wise), Le Silence de la mer (Melville), The Small Black Room (Powell and Pressburger), Stray Dog (Kurosawa), Thieves Highway (Dassin), Whirlpool (Preminger), Whiskey Galore! (Mackendrick).

Wishlist/Blindspots: Beyond the Forest, Easy Living, The Fountainhead, Impact, Festival Day, Knock on Any Door, Manon, Slaterry’s Hurricane, Twelve O’clock High, The Spider and the Fly.

1968:

  1.    2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
  2.    Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
  3.    Shame (Bergman)
  4.    Once Upon a Time in America (Leone)
  5.    The Great Silence (Corbucci)
  6.    Kuroneko (Shindo)
  7.    Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
  8.    Faces (Cassavetes)
  9.    The Color of Pomegranates (Parajanov)
10.  Stolen Kisses (Truffaut)

Honorable Mentions: The Boston Strangler (Fleischer), Mandabi (Sembene), Targets (Bogdanovich), Hour of the Wolf (Bergman), The Stalking Moon (Mulligan), The Mercenary (Corbucci), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea), Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton), If…. (Anderson), Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves).

1977

1.    Killer of Sheep (Burnett)
2.    That Obscure Object of My Desire (Bunuel)
3.    Stroszek (Herzog)
4.    The American Friend (Wenders)
5.    Star Wars (Lucas)
6.    Sorcerer (Friedkin)
7.    Annie Hall (Allen)
8.    The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)
9.    Opening Night (Cassavetes)
10.  Cross Iron (Peckinpah)

Honorable Mentions: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg), 3 Women (Altman), Suspiria (Argento), Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi), New York, New York (Scorsese), The Last Wave (Weir), Martin (Romero), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Wolfgang Reitherman), Eraserhead (Lynch), Rabid (Cronenberg).

 

1988

  1.    Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies)
  2.    Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
  3.    Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis)
  4.    Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata)
  5.    They Live (Carpenter)
  6.    My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
  7.    The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
  8.    A Short Film About Killing (Kieslowski)
  9.    Ariel (Kaurismaki)
10.  Die Hard (McTierney)

Honorable Mentions: As Tears Go By (Kar Wai), The Firm (Clarke), The Thin Blue Line (Morris), The Vanishing (Sluizer), Beetlejuice (Burton), Alice (Svankmajer), The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang), Dead Ringers (Cronenberg), Bird (Eastwood), Hairspray (Waters).