The full list of my favorite movies of each year (1920 - 2020)

Welcome to my extended love letter to movies! Click any year in the list below — from 1920 to 2020 — for stuff about my favorite movies from that year: videos, photos, quotes, and more.

• Where to stream movies on this blog
• Which directors directed the most movies on this blog

Movies with an asterisk * were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, and movies with two ** won that award. The globe 🌍 emoji is for movies nominated for what’s now called the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, and movies with two 🌍 🌏 won that award. Movies with the plant 🌿 emoji won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Here are “the rules” for my list.

2020	(1) The Father*
	(2) The Trip to Greece
2019	(1) Parasite** 🌍 🌏 🌿
	(2) Rocketman
	(3) Portrait of a Lady on Fire
	(4) Knock Down the House
2018	Burning (with in-depth notes)
2017	(1) Ingrid Goes West
	(2) The Trip to Spain
2016	Graduation
2015	Victoria
2014	(1) Gone Girl
	(2) They Came Together
	(3) Mitt
2013	(1) Blue Is the Warmest Color 🌿
	(2) Nebraska*
	(3) Before Midnight
2012	Wadjda
2011	(1) A Separation 🌍 🌏
	(2) Margaret (NEW)
	(3) Oslo, August 31st
2010	(1) The Trip
	(2) Certified Copy
	(3) The Social Network*
2009	Mother
2008	(1) Happy-Go-Lucky
	(2) Milk*
	(3) U2 3D
2007	(1) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 🌿
	(2) The Counterfeiters 🌍 🌏
	(3) Secret Sunshine
2006	The Lives of Others 🌍 🌏
2005	(1) Match Point
	(2) The Baxter
2004	(1) Napoleon Dynamite (NEW)
	(2) Before Sunset
	(3) Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
2003	The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
2002	(1) About Schmidt
	(2) Spellbound
2001	Ghost World (with in-depth notes)
2000	Memento
1999	American Movie
1998	(1) Run Lola Run
	(2) Happiness
1997	Boogie Nights
1996	(1) Fargo*
	(2) The People vs. Larry Flynt
	(3) Secrets & Lies* 🌿
	(4) Hard Eight
1995	(1) Before Sunrise
	(2) Welcome to the Dollhouse
	(3) Living in Oblivion
1994	(1) Heavenly Creatures (NEW)
	(2) Crumb
	(3) Pulp Fiction* 🌿
	(4) What Happened Was …
	(5) The Shawshank Redemption*
1993	(1) The War Room
	(2) Red Rock West
	(3) The Scent of Green Papaya 🌏
1992	(1) The Player
	(2) Howards End*
	(3) Husbands and Wives
	(4) Single White Female (NEW)
1991	(1) Defending Your Life
	(2) Dogfight (NEW)
	(3) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (NEW)
1990	(1) Slacker
	(2) GoodFellas*
	(3) Back to the Future Part III
	(4) Life Is Sweet (NEW)
	(5) Misery
1989	(1) Back to the Future Part II
	(2) Crimes and Misdemeanors
1988	(1) Talk Radio
	(2) Heathers
	(3) The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1987	(1) Au Revoir les Enfants* 🌍
	(2) No Way Out
1986	(1) Something Wild
	(2) The Fly
	(3) Hannah and Her Sisters*
	(4) About Last Night …
1985	(1) Back to the Future
	(2) After Hours (with in-depth notes)
1984	(1) The Terminator
	(2) Paris, Texas 🌿
	(3) Stop Making Sense
	(4) Purple Rain
	(5) Broadway Danny Rose
1983	The Big Chill*
1982	(1) Fast Times at Ridgemont High
	(2) Tenebrae (NEW)
1981	My Dinner with Andre
1980	(1) The Shining
	(2) Atlantic City*
1979	Manhattan
1978	(1) Days of Heaven
	(2) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (NEW)
	(3) Girlfriends
1977	(1) Annie Hall**
	(2) A Special Day (NEW)
1976	Taxi Driver* 🌿
1975	(1) One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest**
	(2) Dog Day Afternoon*
1974	(1) The Conversation* 🌿
	(2) Chinatown* (NEW)
	(3) Young Frankenstein (NEW)
	(4) The Godfather Part II**
	(5) Lacombe, Lucien 🌍
1973	(1) American Graffiti*
	(2) Scarecrow (NEW)
	(3) Sleeper
1972	(1) The Godfather**
	(2) The New Land 🌍
1971	(1) A Clockwork Orange*
	(2) The Last Picture Show*
	(3) The French Connection** (with in-depth notes) (NEW)
	(4) The Emigrants* 🌍
	(5) Bananas
1970	Five Easy Pieces*
1969	(1) Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
	(2) Law and Order
1968	(1) Monterey Pop
	(2) Romeo and Juliet*
	(3) High School
	(4) Shame
	(5) Planet of the Apes
1967	Le Samouraï
1966	Persona
1965	The Shop on Main Street 🌍 🌏
1964	(1) A Hard Day’s Night
	(2) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*
1963	(1) The Fire Within
	(2) High and Low
1962	(1) Lolita
	(2) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (NEW)
	(3) Le Doulos (NEW)
	(4) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (NEW)
1961	(1) West Side Story**
	(2) Through a Glass Darkly 🌍 🌏
	(3) Breakfast at Tiffany’s
	(4) Cash on Demand
1960	(1) The Apartment**
	(2) Psycho
	(3) Zazie dans le Métro
	(4) The Time Machine
1959	(1) Some Like It Hot
	(2) The 400 Blows (NEW)
	(3) Anatomy of a Murder*
	(4) Imitation of Life
1958	(1) Vertigo
	(2) The Music Room
	(3) Elevator to the Gallows
1957	(1) Paths of Glory
	(2) The Cranes Are Flying 🌿
	(3) Witness for the Prosecution*
	(4) Wild Strawberries
	(5) White Nights
1956	(1) The Wrong Man
	(2) The Killing
	(3) The Bitter Stems (NEW)
1955	(1) The Night of the Hunter
	(2) Rififi
	(3) All That Heaven Allows
	(4) Smiles of a Summer Night
	(5) The Big Combo
1954	(1) Rear Window
	(2) La Strada 🌍 🌏
	(3) Dial M for Murder
	(4) Human Desire
	(5) Sansho the Bailiff
1953	(1) Summer with Monika
	(2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
	(3) From Here to Eternity**
	(4) Stalag 17
	(5) Niagara
	(6) Sawdust and Tinsel
	(7) Dangerous Crossing (NEW)
	(8) The Big Heat
1952	(1) Sudden Fear
	(2) Singin’ in the Rain
	(3) High Noon* (NEW)
	(4) Ikiru
	(5) Forbidden Games 🌍 🌏
	(6) Limelight
	(7) Don’t Bother to Knock
1951	(1) A Streetcar Named Desire*
	(2) A Place in the Sun*
	(3) Ace in the Hole
	(4) Strangers on a Train
1950	(1) The Asphalt Jungle
	(2) In a Lonely Place (NEW)
	(3) Sunset Boulevard*
	(4) All About Eve**
	(5) Rashomon 🌍 🌏
	(6) Harvey
	(7) The Man Who Cheated Himself
1949	(1) Gun Crazy
	(2) A Letter to Three Wives*
	(3) Thieves’ Highway
	(4) The Heiress*
	(5) Bitter Rice
	(6) Obsession
1948	(1) Bicycle Thieves 🌍 🌏
	(2) Unfaithfully Yours
	(3) Rope
	(4) The Big Clock
	(5) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*
	(6) Pitfall
	(7) Road House
1947	(1) Out of the Past
	(2) Brute Force
	(3) Repeat Performance (NEW)
1946	(1) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
	(2) It’s a Wonderful Life*
	(3) Notorious
	(4) The Best Years of Our Lives**
	(5) The Postman Always Rings Twice
	(6) Gilda (NEW)
1945	(1) Leave Her to Heaven
	(2) Scarlet Street
	(3) Hangover Square
	(4) The Lost Weekend**
1944	(1) Double Indemnity*
	(2) Laura
	(3) Gaslight*
1943	(1) Meshes of the Afternoon
	(2) Stormy Weather
	(3) Shadow of a Doubt
1942	(1) Casablanca**
	(2) Cat People
1941	(1) Citizen Kane*
	(2) Sullivan’s Travels
	(3) The Sea Wolf
	(4) Suspicion* (NEW)
	(5) Love Crazy
1940	(1) Rebecca** (with in-depth notes)
	(2) The Great Dictator*
	(3) The Bank Dick
	(4) The Shop Around the Corner
1939	(1) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington*
	(2) The Wizard of Oz*
	(3) Gone with the Wind**
	(4) Only Angels Have Wings (NEW)
	(5) The Women (NEW)
	(6) Wuthering Heights*
	(7) Destry Rides Again
1938	Bringing up Baby
1937	(1) Confession
	(2) The Awful Truth*
1936	(1) Modern Times
	(2) Dodsworth*
1935	(1) A Night at the Opera
	(2) Bride of Frankenstein
	(3) Top Hat
	(4) The Whole Town’s Talking
1934	(1) It’s a Gift
	(2) It Happened One Night**
1933	(1) Duck Soup
	(2) Gold Diggers of 1933 (NEW)
	(3) The Story of Temple Drake
	(4) Design for Living
	(5) The Invisible Man
1932	(1) I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang*
	(2) Horse Feathers
	(3) Broken Lullaby (NEW)
	(4) Trouble in Paradise
	(5) Jewel Robbery
	(6) Island of Lost Souls
1931	(1) City Lights
	(2) Frankenstein
	(3) Monkey Business
	(4) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NEW)
	(5) M
1930	Animal Crackers
1929	Pandora’s Box
1928	The Wind
1927	(1) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
	(2) Metropolis
	(3) The Unknown
	(4) The Kid Brother
1926	(1) The General
	(2) Ménilmontant
1925	The Gold Rush
1924	Girl Shy
1923	(1) Safety Last!
	(2) Our Hospitality
1922	Day Dreams
1921	The Kid
1920	Way Down East

MORE:

• Letterboxd list: my #1 favorite movie of each year from 1920 to 2020

• Which composers wrote the musical score for the most movies on this list?

• Which acclaimed movies did I see but leave off the list?

“One of the gifts a movie lover can give another is the title of a wonderful film they have not yet discovered.”            — Roger Ebert

my favorite movies of 2020:

(1) The Father

(2) The Trip to Greece

favorite of 2020:

The Father

(Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Olivia Williams, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell. Directed by Florian Zeller.)

Anthony Hopkins won the Oscar for Best Actor at age 83 — and became the oldest person ever to win any acting Oscar — for playing a father with dementia (also named Anthony) in this daring and unsettling movie. Variety’s review summed it up:

“The Father” does something that few movies about mental deterioration in old age have brought off in quite this way, or this fully. It places us in the mind of someone losing his mind — and it does so by revealing that mind to be a place of seemingly rational and coherent experience. …

All the actors in “The Father” are vivid ([Olivia Colman] brings her role a loving vulnerability that warms you), but Hopkins is flat-out stunning. He acts, for a while, with grizzled charm and roaring certainty, but the quality that holds his performance together, and begins to take it over, is a cosmic confusion laced with terror. Anthony is losing more than his memory — he’s losing himself. The triumph of Hopkins’ acting is that even as he does, you’re right there with him.

(How to stream The Father.)

2nd favorite of 2020:

The Trip to Greece

(Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.)

This movie and the earlier ones in The Trip series (which were some of my choices for 2010 and 2017 plus one that’s not on this list) all focus on comedic banter between the same two friends, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon — British actors playing themselves. Each movie also brings up drama involving their families or relationships, but The Trip to Greece takes a darker turn than the earlier movies. The dramatic parts of these movies might feel unsatisfying, but you can appreciate them if you see them not as full-fledged plot arcs, but as rough sketching to add dimension to the two men and to contrast with the comic masks they wear when they’re around each other.

High points of The Trip to Greece include Bergman-esque black and white dreams Coogan has while his father is ill, and Coogan and Brydon’s ad-libbed vocalizing to imitate Gregorian chant while floating through caves which ancient Greeks believed were pathways to the underworld — you can see a bit of that at the beginning of this trailer:

We’ve not got much time left. You gonna miss me?

Oh, yes … and no!

Yes and no?

I find you very entertaining … but you can be exhausting.

Exhausting? Me? Good God, you should meet you!

Stream it on these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movies of 2019:

(1) Parasite

(2) Rocketman

(3) Portrait of a Lady on Fire

(4) Knock Down the House

favorite of 2019:

Parasite

[Korean: Gisaengchung]    기생충  

(Song Kang-ho, Lee Jung-eun, Choi Woo-shik, Cho Yeo-jeong, Lee Sun-kyun, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, Park Myung-hoon. Directed by Bong Joon-ho.)

This dark-comedy thriller is the only movie in any language other than English that’s ever won the Oscar for Best Picture in over 90 years. That’s at once a great honor and a great absurdity. As director Bong Joon-ho said while accepting the Oscar for Best Director: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you’ll be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan … because life cannot be planned.

Stream it on HBO Max, Netflix, or these sites. I also recommend the Criterion blu-ray (or DVD), which has a lot of bonus features including a black and white version of the movie — I enjoyed it more than color. All Criterion discs are 50% off in the Barnes & Noble sale every July and November. (Amazon might lower some of its prices in response.)

2nd favorite of 2019:

Rocketman

(Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard. Directed by Dexter Fletcher.)

Elton John’s story comes to life in dizzying fantasy and sobering reality.

You gotta kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you wanna be.

(How to stream Rocketman.)

3rd favorite of 2019:

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

[French: Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu] 

(Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami. Directed by Céline Sciamma.)

In solitude, I felt the liberty you spoke of. But I also felt your absence.

Stream it on HBO Max or these sites.

4th favorite of 2019:

Knock Down the House

(Documentary. Directed by Rachel Lears.)

This is on Netflix, which has also put the whole movie on YouTube, free for non-subscribers:

A documentary about a political campaign is the opposite of most movies: we the viewers know from the beginning what’s going to happen, and we know that the people on screen didn’t know at the time. That reversal of the norm is particularly striking in this documentary about upstart candidates who challenged Democratic incumbents for Congress in 2018, leading to one of America’s biggest electoral shocks in a long time.

Some of the best parts are future Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez behind the scenes — goofing around with her boyfriend, mocking her opponent’s campaign leaflet, giving herself a pep talk before a debate, etc.

I wish every American would watch Knock Down the House along with Mitt (the documentary about Romney that’s one of my favorite movies of 2014), and realize you can go to a place on the political spectrum that’s far from where you live and still find good people.

In the beginning, the fundamental question is: “Why you? Why do you think you can do this?” The reason why: because nobody else would. So literally anybody could! Because the alternative is no one.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movie of 2018:

Burning

[Korean: Beoning]    버닝  

(Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, Steven Yeun. Directed by Lee Chang-dong.)

Here are my in-depth, scene-by-scene notes on Burning.

This movie isn’t for everyone. It’s long and slow — at times you feel like the movie is daring you not to be bored. You’ll go away from it not being sure exactly what happened, and you might spend a long time thinking about it afterwards. This Rolling Stone review said:

This stunning, slow-build thriller from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong sizzles with a cumulative power that will knock the wind out of you. … Lee has crafted a hypnotic and haunting film that transcends genre to dig deep into the human condition. You won’t be able to get it out of your head.

Stream Burning on Tubi (free with ads) or these sites. And again, see my extensive notes on Burning.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movies of 2017:

(1) Ingrid Goes West

(2) The Trip to Spain

favorite of 2017:

Ingrid Goes West

(Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Billy Magnussen, Wyatt Russell. Directed by Matt Spicer.)

A review in the Los Angeles Times says:

No film has yet captured both the lure and the psychosis of social media quite like “Ingrid Goes West,” a dark comedy — or is it a warning? — about a lonely soul who seeks connection and finds it, unfortunately for everyone in her orbit, on Instagram. This is … a true horror story for our digital times. In the most acutely relatable ways and built around deft turns by Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, it skewers how we live and lurk these days in timelines fraught with angled sunlit selfies, artisanal avocado toasts and the FOMO-frothing torment of scrolling compulsively through other people’s bliss.

Aubrey Plaza says she was inspired by Taxi Driver (my favorite movie of 1976) in playing the title role of Ingrid Goes West and producing the movie. There are also parallels to my 1962 pick, Lolita. Instead of the older man, Humbert Humbert, who’s inappropriately fixated on the teenage girl in Lolita, Ingrid is a young woman inappropriately fixated on another young woman. Both Humbert and Ingrid rearrange their lives around her, moving into a new place and spinning a web of lies and manipulation in order to be near her, while living in constant fear that someone will see through their facade of normality. Lolita is about a twisted relationship with an age gap, where the obsessive person is a sex addict in the more traditionally dominant position of being older, while Ingrid Goes West is about a twisted friendship with a gap in social status, where the obsessive person is an internet addict in the less dominant position.

Stream Ingrid Goes West on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2017:

The Trip to Spain

(Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Margo Stilley. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.)

One of the sequels to my top 2010 choice, The Trip, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again playing themselves.

50 is, in many ways I think, the best age.

Oh, we’re in a sweet spot.

It’s the sweet spot. You still got — touch wood — time.

We’re ripe — we’re ripe fruit. If you hang onto the branch any longer, you’re just gonna wither on the vine, and I won’t do that.

So what do you do then?

Drop!

Or do you want to be plucked? … I’d much rather be plucked than dropped. But who’s gonna pluck you at this age?

Stream The Trip to Spain on Kanopy or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movie of 2016:

Graduation

[Romanian: Bacalaureat] 

(Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Lia Bugnar, Mălina Manovici, Vlad Ivanov, Rareș Andrici. Directed by Cristian Mungiu.)

My post about my favorite movie of 2007 — 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — talked about writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s style of unflinching realism in showing young women trying to obtain an abortion in Romania under Soviet communism. In Graduation, he applies a similar style to corruption in the same country, but in the present day.

After a girl on her way to high school is sexually assaulted and injures her wrist while defending herself, she seems to be in no physical or psychological condition to take a series of exams which she needs to do well on to be admitted to a prestigious London university. The outside world responds coldly: exam administrators don’t offer her any accommodations (and aren’t even sure whether to allow her to take the exams wearing a cast), while the police are feckless at solving the case. Without support from the system on any legitimate level, the girl’s father feels driven to help her through unscrupulous means by exploiting his connections.

From a Washington Post review:

Of course, Romania isn’t the only country in which social capital is king. Because of that, “Graduation” resonates not just as a vivid portrait of a culture at a particular moment in time, but also of the most enduring and confounding contradictions of human nature itself. Although he’s contemplating age-old arguments about means vs. ends, Mungiu nonetheless infuses them with timely relevance, both in the context of a world order that has become broader and more cosmopolitan, and a society that, 30 years after its rebirth, still struggles with establishing agreed-upon norms, expectations and rules of the road. …

The power of the film is cumulative, as the filmmaker spins a mesmerizing morality tale from the dross of daily life. In his skillful hands, the ordinary turns out to be anything but.

One of the few negative reviews said Graduation “suffers from too many narrative threads that don’t resolve.” It’s true that this movie deprives us of clarity and finality, leaving us to wonder what exactly happened and how it’s all going to turn out. That might bother you … or you might find meaningfulness in the uncertainty.

Once she starts on this path, there’s no going back. … You know in your heart that it’s not right. …

If there were any other way, I wouldn’t even think of it. … All that counts is getting to a normal world.

How you get there matters too. It’s not fair to —

Being attacked in broad daylight in a crowded place, is that fair? … You ended up in some library because you were fair. Sometimes the result is all that matters.

Stream Graduation on these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movie of 2015:

Victoria

[German]

(Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit, André Hennicke. Directed by Sebastian Schipper.)

This whole thriller was done all in one take!

The director (Sebastian Schipper) and the lead actress (Laia Costa) talk about how they did it in this half-hour interview:

The director has a small part in another German movie on my list: the man riding a bike in Run Lola Run (my favorite of 1998).

You can stream Victoria on Kanopy or these sites. Just don’t stream it on any site that interrupts it with ads, because this is a movie where the flow of the whole experience is more important than the plot.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movies of 2014:

(1) Gone Girl

(2) They Came Together

(3) Mitt

favorite of 2014:

Gone Girl

(Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris. Directed by David Fincher.)

A “top-shelf mystery and pitch-black comedy” according to this review, which says:

Gone Girl may come advertised as a thriller, but that’s [director David Fincher] being a trickster — he’s gone and made the curtest, nastiest, most acidic black comedy about the marital accord since The War of the Roses … borne out of the view that, basically, it’s surprising husbands and wives aren’t all murdering each other. And that’s also its more serious subject — the “narcissistic armor” that we don, “the vision of ourselves that we all project and construct, for our parents, for our teachers, and as we go out in the world and try to mate,” as Fincher explained.

Ever hear the expression: simplest answer’s often the correct one?

Actually, I’ve never found that to be true.

Stream Gone Girl on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2014:

They Came Together

(Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Ellie Kemper, Bill Hader. Directed by David Wain.)

This could be mind-numbing if you’re not in the mood for a parody of romantic comedies. But go into it with the right mindset, and They Came Together is uproarious. This review sums it up:

Lovelorn, “handsome in a non-threatening way” Joel (Paul Rudd) and adorably klutzy Molly (Amy Poehler) bump into each other on the street, fall in love, split before the holidays and then make up via a grand public gesture. If it all sounds familiar, that’s the point. Starting from the glistening aerial shot of Manhattan, this film knowingly and cleverly spoofs every rom-com cliché this side of When Harry Met Sally … The irreverent jokes are often fiercely funny — and prodded along by the sparkling, gung-ho leads. We’ll have what they’re having.

Stream They Came Together on Amazon Prime or these sites.

3rd favorite of 2014:

Mitt

(Documentary. Directed by Greg Whiteley.)

This look behind the scenes of Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns is different from The War Room (my favorite movie of 1993), in which the candidate, Bill Clinton, is seen only occasionally, and the real stars of the movie are his campaign managers. Mitt focuses on the candidate and his family, who are hard not to like, regardless of your politics.

A year ago, we told you we’d love you no matter how this thing turned out. And —

Now you’re not so sure?

Stream it on Netflix.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movies of 2013:

(1) Blue Is the Warmest Color

(2) Nebraska

(3) Before Midnight

favorite of 2013:

Blue Is the Warmest Color

[French: La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2]

(Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche.)

An inordinate amount of attention has been given to the extended sex scenes which led to an NC-17 rating but aren’t the most important part of this 3-hour movie. Blue Is the Warmest Color is about so much more than sex; it’s about life, conversation, food, art, philosophy, anxiety, power. …

What’s your name?

Adèle.

Adèle, pretty name. … Adèle means something in Arabic — I think it means … hope? Love?

No, justice.

I was close.

Stream Blue Is the Warmest Color on Tubi (free with ads), Kanopy, or one of these sites.

2nd favorite of 2013:

Nebraska

(Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk. Directed by Alexander Payne.)

You told the sheriff that you were walking to Nebraska?

That’s right — to get my million dollars.

What million dollars?

“We are now authorized to pay one million dollars to Woodrow T. Grant, Billings, Montana. …”

“Mega Sweepstakes Marketing”? Dad … they’re just trying to sell you magazines.

It says I won!

So mail it in. I’ll help you.

I’m not trusting the mail with a million dollars!

Stream Nebraska on Amazon Prime or one of these sites.

3rd favorite of 2013:

Before Midnight

(Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy. Directed by Richard Linklater.)

The emotional end of the Before trilogy. (The first two are some of my favorites from 1995 and 2004.)

When I was younger, I just wanted everything to speed up … so I could be on my own, so I could be free from my parents and school and all that shit. You know, I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up and be an adult. And then I kind of feel like that happened, and now I just want everything to slow down.

It’s strange, I’ve always had this feeling, no matter where I am in my life, that it’s either a memory or a dream. …

Me too, I mean, it’s like, is this really my life? Like, is it really happening right now? … Every year I just seem to get a little bit more humbled and more overwhelmed about all the things I’m never gonna know or understand.

That’s what I keep telling you: you know nothing! … But not knowing is not so bad. I mean, the point is to be looking, searching, to stay hungry, right? …

I know, it’s true — I just wish it was a little easier.

How do you mean?

Oh, just to maintain a certain level of passion, you know? I mean, it used to come so naturally. I remember when I was younger, me and all my writer friends, we just felt like we were doing something important, you know, like this was our time. … It just grew out of all this energy, you know, this creativity or whatever ambitions people have. … I think you gotta be a little deluded to stay motivated.

You can stream Before Midnight on Hulu or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movie of 2012:

Wadjda

[Arabic]      وجدة ‎

(Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Ahd Kamel, Sultan Al Assaf. Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour.)

This is the first movie ever shot all in Saudia Arabia, and the first full-length movie directed by a Saudi woman.

Kelly Jane Torrance describes Wadjda (that’s a Washington Times link which could limit your articles unless you subscribe):

The movie opens with the title character tying the purple laces of her Converse sneakers while listening to a catchy song by the American-based hipster band Grouplove. She might be a 12-year-old girl from any part of the world, except that her colorful hair barrettes are hidden under a black abaya: Wadjda … lives in a small town outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. …

She desires nothing more than a bicycle with green handlebars and ribbons that just arrived at a local shop. She’s saved a bit of money from selling homemade bracelets at school and asks her mom for a loan for the rest. “Have you ever seen a girl on a bike?” is her mother’s scornful reply. …

You might say, then, that this groundbreaking film is a sweet coming-of-age story about a girl who really wants to buy a bike. But it’s far more compelling — and subversive — than that implies. … Most of what you need to know about fundamentalist Muslim society is on screen. The boys wear comfortable white clothes to play in the park; girls are completely covered, head to toe, in black. Boys yell back and forth at each other while they play their games; girls must remain practically silent in public. As the strict school headmaster … says, “A woman’s voice is her nakedness.”

And “Wadjda” itself is certainly the product of a clear, strong voice. The film is filled with finely composed shots that show both the beauty and the ugliness of Saudi Arabia, inside and out.

(How to stream Wadjda.)

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

my favorite movies of 2011:

(1) A Separation

(2) Margaret

(3) Oslo, August 31st

favorite of 2011:

A Separation

[Persian: Jodaí-e Nadér az Simín]
سیمین‎جدایی نادر از

(Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini, Sarina Farhadi, Babak Karimi, Merila Zarei, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi. Directed by Asghar Farhadi.)

Ebert said this about A Separation, which won the Oscar for what’s now called Best International Feature Film:

This film combines a plot worthy of a great novel with the emotional impact of a great melodrama. It involves a struggle for child custody, the challenge of a parent with Alzheimer’s, the intricacies of the law, and the enigma of discovering the truth. In its reconstruction of several versions of a significant event, it is as baffling as “Rashomon.” … “A Separation” will become one of those enduring masterpieces watched decades from now.

An anonymous Iranian wrote a piece on this movie in the New York Review of Books:

[A Separation] is a fine account of Iran’s predicament; anyone interested in the mysteries of change and tradition — the difficulties faced by many people as they try and reconcile themselves to modern values and norms — will learn much from it. I saw it in Tehran this summer, and so movingly did it reflect what I was witnessing around me, I was surprised that the authorities had allowed it to be screened.

He won’t come with me. If he does, I’ll cancel my request for a divorce. … Will you come?

No I won’t. …

Please explain why.

Let her explain why we should move abroad in these circumstances.

You give me one reason to stay.

My father — I can’t leave him.

But you can leave your wife?

When did I leave you? …

When you tell your wife and child to leave, isn’t that leaving them? …

If you don’t want to stay, I can’t keep you by force. …

His father has Alzheimer’s. … Does he even realize you are his son?

I know he is my father. …

Your daughter or her future is not important to you? …

So the children in this country don’t have a future?

Stream A Separation on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2011:

Margaret

(Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Jeannie Berlin, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Broderick, Kenneth Lonergan. Directed by Lonergan.)

A high school student, Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), has a comfortable upbringing on the Upper West Side of Manhattan until her life gets shaken up by becoming a strange part of a bus accident that kills a stranger named Monica (Allison Janney).

In this sprawling drama (which is either 2 and a half or 3 hours long, depending on the version), we see how the tragedy affects Lisa in many ways, both overt (getting involved with a police investigation, the victim’s family, litigation, etc.) and subtle. Before the accident, her comments in classroom discussions about hot topics like terrorism are righteous expressions of moral clarity. After the accident, she’ll have to navigate one moral grey area after another.

Lisa isn’t well-equipped to do that at age 17. Whenever any adult seems like they might be there for her and offer guidance, emotions get in the way. Lisa, who’s a virgin at the beginning of the movie, also struggles with relationships with boys her age (including a sleazy cocaine user played by Kieran Culkin), and she has an inappropriate fixation on one of her teachers (Matt Damon). She can’t seem to form a strong connection to anyone. You wonder if the strongest personal connection she’s ever had in her life was with Monica, in the last few minutes of her life.

In many movies focused on teenagers, the parents are predictable, cardboard figures, but this movie allows Lisa’s mom, Joan Cohen (J. Smith-Cameron), to be a complex character in her own right. Divorced from Lisa’s dad, Joan starts an unsatisfying relationship with Ramon (Jean Reno), who comes across as well-meaning but stilted, and he doesn’t realize how little he’s connecting with Joan. (When Joan observes that only after the play she’s starring in got critical acclaim did audiences start reacting effusively even though the play was always the same, Ramon misses the subtlety of that point and reacts as if she had simply said, “I think I’m terrible in the play!”)

Margaret had a troubled path to being seen: it was shot in 2005 but was held up by legal issues until 2011. It could’ve used more editing; we didn’t need the subplot about Lisa’s relationship with her father (played by the director, Kenneth Lonergan), who lives across the country in California and feels caught between his daughter and his girlfriend. The few scenes with Matthew Broderick, who plays Lisa’s English teacher, easily could’ve been cut; while he is in the only scene that explains the movie title (which is from a poem — there’s no character named Margaret in the movie), they could’ve either changed the title or named one of the characters Margaret. (This paragraph was inspired by this video about problems with the movie’s editing.)

So Margaret is uneven, but it’s held together by a strong cast, especially a phenomenal performance by Anna Paquin. Anytime something in the movie might seem implausible or overdramatic, Paquin convinces us that this is real life — that this is what it’s really like to be a passionate, flawed teenager who’s just woken up from a dream world to face a reality she isn’t ready for.

Stream Margaret on these sites.

3rd favorite of 2011:

Oslo, August 31st

[Norwegian: Oslo, 31. August]

(Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava. Directed by Joachim Trier.)

Oslo, August 31st and The Fire Within (my favorite movie of 1963) are both based on the same novel. They’re about a man who struggles with suicidal thoughts after being released from treatment for an addiction. The book and the 2011 movie are both about a heroin user; the 1963 movie is about an alcoholic. In both movies, his drug of choice is less important than the fact that he can’t connect with other people, while he longs for some kind of comfort or meaning in his life.

Ebert wrote:

“Oslo, August 31st” is quietly, profoundly, one of the most observant and sympathetic films I’ve seen. Director Joachim Trier and actor Anders Danielsen Lie … understand something fundamental about their character. He believes the ship has sailed without him. … He can’t go back and he can’t go forward. … What a sad, true film.

The director talks about the impression The Fire Within made on him:

Once in a while a movie hits you on a personal level as a pure experience, and that’s what happened when I watched it. At the heart of it is an honest conversation between two friends about the most difficult thing in the world: one of them doesn’t know if he wants to live anymore. It’s an impossible conversation, but in art you can talk in an intimate way about something that serious. …

[Louis Malle, the director of The Fire Within, is] one of the absolute greatest filmmakers. He was always dealing with transgressive subject matter but did it in such a light and unshocking way that you just had to respect. … I was inspired by the idea of doing something like Alice in Wonderland, with a dream logic that you recognize intuitively — also like in David Lynch’s films. You can’t reduce it to something you can explain easily; you have to just see it. …

I think people should keep making versions of this film every ten or twenty years, in different cities and with different characters, and maybe it will be a mirror of society at a certain time.

Stream Oslo, August 31st on the Criterion Channel (leaving after May 2026) or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.