THE RULES for “my favorite movies of each year from 1920 to 2020”

This website is all about “my favorite movie of each year from 1920 to 2020” — 101 years of movie history. First, the rules:

1. There’s no limit on how many times the list can include a certain actor, or director, or anything else, because I want the list to be exactly what it’s called: “my favorite movie from each year…” with no other restrictions. Once I’ve posted the whole thing from 1920 to 2020, I’ll do some follow-up posts about which directors, actors, etc. are the mostly strongly represented.

2. No blank years or ties allowed! In other words, I’m choosing at least one movie for every year, and I’ll always rank them when I pick more than one for a year.

3. I’ve been asked if I’m going to list my “criteria” for selecting the movies. No, I’d rather let people look at the list and draw their own conclusions about what qualities make for a great movie. I can say that whenever I found it hard to choose between two movies, I asked myself: which one would I be more enthusiastic about rewatching more times in the future?

4. I’ll try to avoid spoilers in what I say about the movies, because I know some people don’t want them no matter how old a movie is. But I’ll link to other sites and videos that do have spoilers, so … click carefully!

5. I’ll often include a quote from the movie (in italics with a dotted border). The quotes and video clips aren’t necessarily the best or most famous ones; they’re an attempt to give some sense of the flavor of the movie, to jog the memories of those who’ve seen it, and maybe to intrigue those who haven’t.

6. I’m going by the year when the movie was first released anywhere in the world, which can be earlier than the year shown on some websites.

7. My goal is to be positive about the movies on this list, not to criticize any other movies or to suggest that my taste is better than anyone else’s. I hope this website inspires other people to make their own list and to explore more movies.

Click here for the full list, which I'll keep rolling out until it gets to 2020!