Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

So a friend of mine actually came up with this idea, but I thought it was so good I had to have it. Those of us who love to list will probably be posting our yearly top ten lists soon. This idea is for those who love to list but maybe don't watch enough movies released within the current year to make a top ten. It is for those who are watching a lot of older movies for the first time. Basically it is for anyone who enjoys putting movie lists together. :D The rules are simple: If you watched a movie for the first time in 2014 it is eligible. Make a top ten list compiled from all your first time watches last year. Hopefully this will appeal to some of you and it will be something we can keep going on a yearly basis. Happy listing.

Boy oh boy did I see a lot of great movies in 2014 which made putting this list together hard but fun. I watched 228 movies this year. I know that a lot of you watch more than that, but for me that is a huge number. I am pretty sure it is the most I have ever watched in a year by a long shot. I am leaving some good stuff off my list. Honorable mentions: Virginia Woolf, Elmer Gentry, Bottle Rocket, The American, Short Cuts, Rope, Casablanca, City Lights, and The Seventh Seal. I could probably name more, but on with the ten:

10) The Sweet Smell Of Success

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9) All About Eve

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8) Autumn Sonata

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7) Paris, Texas

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6) The King Of Comedy

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5) The Third Man

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4) Witness For The Prosecution

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3) Becket

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2) Anatomy Of A Murder

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1) Lawrence Of Arabia

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I can't imagine seeing more movies I love than this next year, but one can hope. It was nice to be discovering so many classics for the first time because my year at the theater was certainly not as fruitful. Keep the HOF and the recommendations coming MoFo. You are making me a more knowledgeable and well rounded movie watcher. I welcome comments on my list and can't wait to see some of yours.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I think you missed American Hustle Sean :)

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Well, I guess you probably saw that in December.

Yeah, Hustle was my #2 last year behind Gravity.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

My ten in no order. And realistically I could be forgetting some films:

Sideways
American Hustle (I did not see it until January)
Chinatown
Halloween
The Virgin Spring
The Last Picture Show
L'Avventura
Fantastic Planet
Ed Wood
Tokyo Story

There's a few more that are very close, like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Fantastic Mr. Fox too. Those are the ten I would pick right now though.

I passed over Becket, thinking I wouldn't like it. I guess I'm going to try it.

Hope you like it Cricket. Probably my biggest surprise of the year.

Good stuff Rauldc. Chinatown came close to making mine too. Should have mentioned it in my honorable mentions. Surprised Halloween was a first viewing for you.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I've seen Halloween five times this year, two of them commentaries :)

Sonata was a close contender too.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Forgot to mention how pleased I am to see Sideways up top. You know how much I wanted you to love it.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I had some favourites until I saw Interstellar. That movie simply blew the rest away and now I can only remember Interstella:p

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I won't limit myself to ten. Not ordered:

Ordet
Barry Lyndon
Blue is the Warmest Color
Once Upon a Time in America
Autumn Sonata
Sansho the Bailiff
Whisper of the Heart
Little Otik
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Under the Skin
The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
Mystery Team
Wolf Creek
Elmer Gantry
Punch-Drunk Love
Sweet Smell of Success
Bigger Than Life
Singin' in the Rain
Trouble in Paradise
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring
Fanny and Alexander
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Who Can Kill a Child?
The Wind Will Carry Us
Le boucher
Death Race 2000
4:44 Last Day on Earth
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Nashville
The Swimmer
The Long Goodbye
Popeye
Barbarella
Ghost in the Shell
Hugo
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Holy Motors
The Master
Escape from Tomorrow
Le orme
Overlord
Only Yesterday
The Wolf of Wall Street
Inside Llewyn Davis
Persepolis
Stripes
Her

and I had seen parts of Synecdoche, New York before, but I watched it all the way through for the first time this year. I think it could be the best movie I've seen all year.

My top 10.

Saw plenty of great films this year, but the first is the only one which I'd give the full score. The rest are ranked in no particular order.

8 1/2:
Gave a whole new meaning to auteur theory and personal cinema for me. After months of contemplating, and, after finally rewatching it, I decided it was all-time top 5 material.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/cdcc...WpryPrxqie.jpg

The Holy Mountain:
"Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles" - this is actually a quote from the director of this film, and that's all you need to know about this film.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/rDra...Y5sHKRBm8X.jpg

Le Samourai: You can't execute a film so flawlessly today, you just can't.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/zPeL...oc0fbDIqMw.jpg

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: First-rate horror, bravura filmmaking.
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Chungking Express: Not my first Kar-wai, but definitely my favorite. The characters, the colors, the music, the dreamlike atmosphere, all wonderful.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/A1a2...uJP2wTlbhr.jpg

Serpico: One of my all-time favorites period.
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Straw Dogs: Great, great movie about character and machismo. This is the year I realized just how much I admired Dustin Hoffman as an actor, and this film is just one of the reasons why.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/eViA...mlTidq8QZ8.jpg

Body Double: A joy to watch from start to finish. Just fantastic. Hands down my favorite De Palma.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/k8a5...PIfyCyBD2b.jpg

Stalker: So far it's my second favorite Tarkovsky. Like most great films, it grows on you. The change of color in this film basically sums up the entire film for me, and it took me months to realize just how powerful and meaningful it was.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/m7yr...jEhkNJVpxt.jpg

Werckmeister Harmonies: I even wrote a review about this one a while back. The music, the camerawork, the mood, they still stay with me.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/3lzH...5jYmfstHJd.jpg



Honorable mentions: A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Touch of Evil, Barry Lyndon, Hour of the Wolf, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Amarcord, Rio Bravo, Through a Glass Darkly, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Le Cercle Rouge, Bottle Rocket, Three Colors trilogy, For All Mankind, Contempt, Blood Simple, The Hunt.

From what I've seen...

1) Before Sunrise - 10/10
2) Before Sunset - 10/10
3) Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 10/10
4) X-Men: Days of Future Past - 9.5/10
5) Interstellar - 9.5/10
6) For a Few Dollars More - 9.5/10
7) Guardians of the Galaxy - 9/10
8) Oculus - 9/10
9) Before Midnight - 9/10
10) A Fistful of Dollars - 9/10

Numbers 1 through 9 are all in my top 100.

My top 10 favorite films I've watched for the first time in 2014:

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1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2. High and Low (1963)
3. Solaris (1972)
4. Playtime (1967)
5. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
6. Barry Lyndon (1975)
7. Network (1976)
8. All That Jazz (1979)
9. F For Fake (1973)
10. Body Heat (1981)

Here are some other new favorites that I discovered (watched for the first time) in 2014:

1930s

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M (1931)

1940s

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Scarlet Street (1945)
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Nightmare Alley (1947)

1950s

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Limelight (1952)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Some Came Running (1958)

1960s

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8r5Kcavflt...onds,+1966.bmp

Charade (1963)
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
Seconds (1966)
Le Samouraï (1967)

1970s

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Il Conformista (1970)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
Amarcord (1973)
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
Night Moves (1975)
Stalker (1979)

1980s

http://www.adriangeorgescu.ro/wp-con...k1-459x231.jpg

Pennies from Heaven (1981)
Angel Heart (1987)
House of Games (1987)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

2000s

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Sexy Beast (2000)
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
Femme Fatale (2002)
Idiots and Angels (2008)

2010s

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American Hustle (2013)
The Double (2013)
The Grandmaster (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)


There were plenty of other films that I really enjoyed, but these were the true highlights. It was yet another very satisfying year of exploring films!

Honorable mentions (in airing order):

• Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
• The girl with the hat box - Devushka s korobkoy (Boris Barnet, 1927)
• The blue angel - Der blaue engel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
• Scarface (Howard Hawks & Richard Rosson, 1932)
• To be or not to be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
• Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)
• Kind hearts and coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
• Her mother's profession - Uwasa no onna (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
• Throne of blood - Kumonosu-jô (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
• Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
• The 400 blows - Les quatre-cents coups (François Truffaut, 1959)
• The skeleton of Mrs. Morales - El esqueleto de la señora Morales (Rogelio A. González, 1959)
• Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)
• Passenger - Pasazerka (Andrzej Munk & Witold Lesiewicz, 1963)
• The naked kiss (Samuel Fuller, 1964)
• Shame - Skammen (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
• The plea - Vedreba (Tengiz Abuladze, 1968)
• The seven who were hanged - Balada o siedmich obesených (Martin Hollý, 1968)
• Investigation of a citizen above suspicion - Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Elio Petri, 1970)
• Tristana (Luis Buñuel, 1970)
• Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
• Love and death (Woody Allen, 1975)
• The shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
• Pixote - Pixote: A lei do mais fraco (Héctor Babenco, 1981)
• The secret of NIMH (Don Bluth, 1982)
• An American tail (Don Bluth, 1986)
• Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)
• The cat who walked by herself - Koshka, kotoraya gulyala sama po sebe (Ideya Garnina, 1988)
• All dogs go to Heaven (Don Bluth & Gary Goldman, 1989)
• The war is over - Après la guerre (Jean-Loup Hubert, 1989)
• Baduk (Majid Majidi, 1992)
• I stand alone - Seul contre tous (Gaspar Noé, 1998)
• The road home - Wo de fu qin mu qin (Zhang Yimou, 1999)
• Code unknown - Code inconnu (Michael Haneke, 2000)
• Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)
• The return - Vozvrashchenie (Andrei Zvyaginstev, 2003)
• Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
• Grindhouse: Planet Terror (Robert Rodríguez, 2007)
• The Tracey fragments (Bruce McDonald, 2007)
• World's greatest dad (Bobcat Goldwaith, 2009)
• A letter to Momo - Momo e no tegami (Hiroyuki Okiura, 2011)
• A separation - Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
• Bunny Drop - Usagi Drop (Sabu, 2011)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (David Yates, 2011)
• Wrinkles - Arrugas (Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
• Final cut. Ladies and Gentlemen - Final cut: Hölgyeim és uraim (György Pálfi, 2012)
• Before midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
• Cheap thrills (E.L. Katz, 2013)
• Chinese puzzle - Casse-tête chinois (Cédric Klapisch, 2013)
• Coherence (James Ward Byrkit, 2013)
• Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion - Gekijouban Mahou shojo Madoka magika Shinpen: Hangyaku no monogatari (Akiyuki Shinbo & Yukihiro Miyamoto, 2013)
• Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton, 2013)
• The wind rises - Kaze tachinu (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
• Venus in fur - La Vénus à la fourrure (Roman Polanski, 2013)
• Wild tales - Relatos Salvajes (Damián Szifrón, 2014)

Overall, despite I couldn't reach my major objective -365 movies- this year, I watched plenty of great stuff and could finally see many movies I had postponed for years. It was a very satisfying year in terms of film, and I hope I can do the 365 movies thing in 2015.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Lots of good stuff Jal. I saw Double Indemnity for the first time last year, it most certainly would have topped my list in 2014. Stalker was also a first watch last year and I thought it was great. I really responded to Venus In Fur as well. Good stuff.

Hey Cob, same #1.:highfive: I would have expected that you had already seen Lawrence. What a fantastic example of epic film making. I never thought I would say I can't wait to see a four hour movie again, but I can't.

Great stuff guys, I am glad a bunch of people are participating in this.

1. Mary and Max. (Adam Elliot, 2009)
2. The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013)
3. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
4. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
5. Persona (Ingmar Berman, 1966)
6. Harold and Maude (Hal Asby, 1971)
7. Ernest and Celestine (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar,Benjamin Renner, 2012)
8. Bronson (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2008)
9. A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, 2009)
10. A Separation (Ashgar Farhadi, 2011)

Honorable Mentions: Casablanca, North By Northwest, Tale of Tales, Deliverance, Serpico, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Cries & Whispers, The Illusionist, The Triplets of Belleville, Gone Girl, Plein Soleil, Persepolis, Darkness Light Darkness.

I tend to procrastinate long epics sometimes, but I finally watched it this year.
When a film makes you feel like you've actually traveled through the desert yourself, you know the film was special. ;)

Thanks Seanc :). Double indemnity was my latest veiwing from the top10 (and the one I had been postponing the longest), it has probably the best visual directing I've seen from Wilder and quite close to The apartment in terms of writing quality. So while my adoration for that one is too strong to be defeated, I would probably pick this as Wilder's most complete movie.

Stalker is a kind of long postponed work as well, but actually because I intended to explore the work of Tarkovsky in chronological order... I couldn't do this in the end, but that stopped me from watching this and Solaris (not yet seen) for a while. I am glad that I could finally watch it and get sucked into its superb atmosphere. It is no doubt a rich and complex film I'll enjoy even more in rewatch.

To be honest, and I'm kind of a fan of Roman Polanski's movies, Venus in fur flew under my radar for a long while. I didn't pay any attention to the director since I first grew an interest on Carnage at the time of its airing, though I couldn't see it in theaters (and by the way, watched it a month ago, and this time I was quite underwhelmed). For some reason Venus in fur didn't catch my interest at the time and I even forgot it existed. It turned to be a wonderful piece and its strong sexual tension and claustrophobic atmosphere throughout reminded me of the apartment trilogy.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Love your #4 MV. Like seeing Serpico in your honorable as well. I have loved that movie for a long time.

1. The Saragossa Manuscript (Has, 1965)
It's not often these days that a film will stay at the forefront of my mind for days after I've finished it. This film did. I cannot praise this film highly enough. It's absolutely stunning.
2. La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
Masterpiece.
3. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt, 2012)
"Six weeks later a sunflower grew out of his head."
I really don't think I can properly express just how amazing this film is. So I won't. If you haven't seen it, do so, immediately.
4. Hard to be a God (German, 2013)
Although technically a 2013 film, this probably will top my list of favourite films of 2014. Fantastic.
5. Cockfighter (Hellman, 1974)
An under seen gem. Albeit a very brutal and sometimes hard to watch, gem.
6. Body Double (De Palma, 1984)
This film has given me a whole new appreciation of De Palma, who was someone I'd long dismissed as a film maker which I now realise was a massive oversight on my part.
7. Blazing Saddles (Brooks, 1974)
There aren't many films which end with the destruction of the Hollywood system (I wouldn't call that a spoiler). Oh, and of course, it's very funny, too...
8. Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984)
This film turned me into a Talking Heads fan.
9. Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)
Managed to catch it in the theatre over the summer. I have no doubt I would have liked the film if I'd seen it at home, but seeing it in a theatre certainly upped the experience.
10. The Parallel Street (Khittl, 1962)
A truly unique experience.

Glad to see yet another MoFo who acknowledges the sheer genius of that film. :cool:

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Thanks for sharing Brother Blue. The only one of those I have seen is Beautiful Day which I quite liked. I have started Blazing Saddles a couple times but never made it through. I don't think Brooks humor is for me. I need to try some of his movies again though. It has been many years since I gave given him a shot.

I'd definitely give it another go. I, like you, wasn't quite feeling it at the start either, but I think the latter half really picks up and the ending is just fantastic.

If you like sci-fi, try watching Spaceballs. It's my favorite Mel Brooks movie, and it helps if you're a fan of the genre.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I've only seen one of yours Brother Blue, Dead Man. I liked quite well and even reviewed it here on my review thread. Since that one I've watched Mystery Train another Jim Jarmusch film. He's becoming a favorite director of mine. I'll have to watch a few more of his films.

http://www.movieforums.com/community...t=37050&page=5

mine will be horror-themed, just bc i feel like it :)

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#10. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984)

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#9. HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS (1988)

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#8. SCRE4M (2011)

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#7. BLOOD & BLACK LACE (1964)

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#6. JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI (1986)

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#5. NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979)

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#4. ERASERHEAD (1977)

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#3. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST 3: DREAM WARRIORS (1987)

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#2. SCREAM 2 (1997)

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#1. THE BURNING (1981)

seen a lotsa good non-horrors for the first time this year too!

I watched that a bunch in High School but have never gone back to it. I am really scared it won't hold up because of the jokes I remember. I will get back to it though.

Man I've watched a lot of masterpiece this year. I never thought it would be that hard to make a top 10. I just couldn't, it has to be a top 20. (and I would put 40 easy)

1. The Decline of the American Empire (1986) directed by Denys Arcand
2. The Barbarian Invasion (2003) directed by Denys Arcand
3. The Third Man (1949) directed by Carol Reed
4. Three Colors Red (1994) directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
5. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) directed by Ki-duk Kim
6. Le Cercle Rouge (1970) directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
7. Inherit The Wind (1960) directed by Stanley Kramer
8. Harakiri (1962) directed by Masaki Kobayashi
9. Autumn Sonata (1978) directed by Ingmar Bergman
10. That Obscur Object of Desire (1977) directed by Luis Bunuel
11. Double Indemnity (1944) directed by Billy Wilder
12. The Man Who Would be King (1975) directed by John Huston
13. Companeros & My Name is Nobody (1970, 1975) directed by Sergio Corbucci and Tonino Valeri
14. Whisper of the Heart (1995) directed by Yoshifumi Kondo
15. The Big Blue (1988) directed by Luc Besson
16. The Professionnal (1981) directed by George Lautner
17. L'âge des Ténèbres (Days of Darkness) (2007) directed by Denys Arcand
18. Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais
19. Laura (1944) directed by Otto Preminger
20. Stalker (1979) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Other movies that I LOVED, but just couldn't make the top 20

The Experiment
5 Centimeters Per Seconds
Abre los Ojos
Kramer vs Kramer
Late Spring
Claire's Knee
Nashville
The Straight Story
Memories of Murder
Wild Strawberries
Mulholland Drive
In a Lonely Place
Gone Girl
Red Beard
The Red Shoes
The Twilight Samurai
Under the Skin
Babette's Feast
Get Carter
X-Men Days of Future Past
Duel
Bound for Glory
F for Fake
Jagten (The Hunt)
I Comme Icare (I as in Icarus)
La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Belle de Jour
Breaker Morant
The Seventh Seal
Festen (The Celebration)
Blow-Up
Chariots of Fire

These are the best ones I saw this year. I excluded animation since that countdown is still going, and I bolded what's probably my favorite 15-

Freaks
The Long Good Friday
Rain Man
Elmer Gantry
The Wolf of Wall Street
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe
The Best Years of Our Lives
Little Big Man
Singin' in the Rain
Mona Lisa
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Witness for the Prosecution
Planet of the Apes
The Straight Story
American Hustle
The 25th Hour
The Apartment
Coming Home
The Beguiled
The Shootist
Wake in Fright
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Mikey and Nicky
3 Women
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Joe (1970)
The Seven Samurai
War and Peace
Onibaba
On the Waterfront
Spartacus
The 400 Blows
The Third Man
Breakfast at Tiffany's
One-Eyed Jacks
Lawrence of Arabia
Touch of Evil
Hud
Harakari
A Seperation
Contempt
High and Low
Divorce Italian Style
Ordet
Le Trou
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Good thread idea seanc. I don't know if I want to list mine because I don't want to give spoilers for the top 150 list I'm working on. But I'm enjoying looking at other people's lists.

I cant really recall all the movies i have seen this year, but from the last half year i would say these three are at the top of my list of new discoveries:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DtPqldS2Se...+on+a+wire.jpg

World on a Wire (1973) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/.../platform4.jpg

Platform (2000) by Jia Zhang-Ke

http://www.moviemail.com/images/larg...ors-6954_1.jpg

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964) by Sergei Parajanov

Two other films that i forgot, that were really intriguing:

http://thefilmdesk.com/jetaimejetaim...e-je-taime.jpg

Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968) by Alain Resnais

http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/p...9RD2LZKzbx.jpg

Quince Tree of the Sun (1992) by Victor Erice

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Here are the ten best movies I saw for the first time since January 1st 2014:

1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Gravity
3. The Conformist
4. The Americanization of Emily
5. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. Sorcerer
8. Inside Llewellyn Davis
9. Dallas Buyers Club
10. Fruitvale Station

Too hard for me to work out a top 10 so here are the films that I watched for the first time in 2014 and rated . They are ordered according to when I watched them:

The Circus (1928) - Charles Chaplin
Fanny & Alexander (1982) - Ingmar Bergman
The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961) - Masaki Kobayashi
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) - Abbas Kiarostami
Rear Window (1954) - Alfred Hitchcock
A Separation (2011) - Asghar Farhadi
High & Low (1963) - Akira Kurosawa
Still Walking (2008) - Hirokazu Koreeda
Together (2000) - Lukas Moodysson
The Weeping Meadow (2004) - Theodoros Angelopoulos
The Turin Horse (2011) - Bela Tarr
Spirit of the Beehive (1973) - Victor Erice
Equinox Flower (1958) - Yasujiro Ozu
Like Father, Like Son (2013) - Hirokazu Koreeda
The Graduate (1967) - Mike Nichols
Boyhood (2014) - Richard Linklater
Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) - Stanley Kramer
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Stanley Kubrick
Nights of Cabiria (1957) - Federico Fellini
Be With Me (2005) - Eric Khoo
The Red Shoes (1948) - Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger

I wanted to make this list, but I didn't want it to contain anything that will show up on my best of 2014 list. This year I've seen a record number of both total movies and new-to-me films. Many have been, to put it mildly, junk. I may have forgotten a few, but here's a list of the ones I'd most like to share with you that you may not have seen. There is one cartoon short to support the ten features (so watch Porky in Wackyland before you watch each feature!) :cool:

Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett, 1938)
Many Wars Ago (Francesco Rosi, 1970)
Jimi Hendrix (Joe Boyd, John Head, and Gary Weis, 1973)
The Eagle Shooting Heroes (Jeff Lau, 1993)
The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2008)
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father (Kurt Kuenne, 2008)
City of Life and Death (Chuan Lu, 2009)
Vittorio D. (Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri, 2009)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010)
End of Watch (David Ayer, 2012)
The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Thanks for sharing a list Mark. I have only ever heard of End Of Watch. I need to see that. Definitely something I would normally watch, not sure why I am taking so long getting to it.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I'm just shocked there were 10 films that Mark hadn't seen :cool:

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

What did you rate Mysteries of Lisbon and Eagle Shooting Heroes, mark?

At the time, both were . I just remembered another one - Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967) - -

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

In no particular order:

West of the Tracks
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
The Last Bolshevik
Love Streams
Spring in a Small Town
Quince Tree of the Sun
The River
Two Years at Sea
Inside Llewyn Davis
Waiting for Happiness

I'm probably missing some, and there's still a week left in the year, but this is close enough.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Jean Renoir's The River?

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

That's the one.

I saw that at the Los Gatos Theatre in 1986 :) But that's one of only three on your list I've seen.

http://www.amovieaweek.com/images/lydonduel.jpg

1. Barry Lyndon
2. Kiki's Delivery Service
3. Grave of the Fireflies
4. Clue
5. Three Colours: Red
6. Ponyo
7. Rope
8. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
9. Paprika
10. The Muppet Movie

Honourable mentions: Shadow of a Doubt, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, The Cat Returns, Porco Rosso, Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil, Man Bites Dog, Strangers on a Train, From Here to Eternity, Rififi and A Perfect World.

I limited my choices to films that had not been released in either 2013 or 2014 so as to allow for some overlap due to the complicated nature of release dates when it came to Australian film distribution. Now on to the write-up...

Barry Lyndon got the #1 pick because it was Kubrick taking on a period drama that could have been a little too stuffy for its own good - three hours long with a fairly predictable rise-and-fall kind of story about a young Irish rogue making his way in the world - but in Kubrick's hands it became a minor masterpiece. Excellent photography, amazing art direction, stunning choices of background score and some very well-executed sequences made it rise above my expectations considerably.

As you can probably tell, I spent a good chunk of time catching up on Studio Ghibli films - while Grave of the Fireflies has earned its reputation as an emotionally draining wartime tragedy, I gave the edge to Kiki's Delivery Service because of how well it managed to handle its coming-of-age narrative with such skill that I was very much willing to give up some tough suspension of belief (witches exist, but people are generally apathetic unless they either cause trouble or do something awesome? I can roll with that). This also applies to Ponyo to a lesser extent, which mixed and matched elements of Kiki with the more fantastic visuals of Spirited Away and provided another excellent addition to the top ten. As for the honourable mentions, Laputa was generally good but a little on the rough side, The Cat Returns was a brief but underrated variation on Alice in Wonderland that was understandably overshadowed by Spirited Away, while Porco Rosso was well-made but was a little too inconsistent when it came to its tone.

There were also quite a few Hitchcock films I saw and liked - Rope got the top ten pick because it had a great high concept that was backed up by Hitchcock experimenting with making a film that seemed to be shot in a single take. Shadow of a Doubt was a solid tale of small-town malice that's weighed down a bit by certain minor flaws - the same sort of applied to Strangers on a Train, which had a suspenseful enough narrative but didn't quite have the best execution.

As for the other top ten picks - Clue wins because of its masterful approach to building a narrative off the boardgame that resulted in black comedy that was amusing (if not always laugh-out-loud funny) and centred around a plot that always kept you (and the cast) guessing. Three Colours: Red was a striking piece of work about the fragility and unpredictability of human connections aided by an amazing colour palette. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was a slick Seventies heist that still holds up forty years later (even if parts of it come across as a little too dated for their own good) and kept up the suspense until the very last second of film. Paprika was a wild technicolour nightmare ride that I sort of expected from a creator like Satoshi Kon, with its vibrant yet troubling imagery backing up a decent enough "dream-or-reality" kind of narrative. The Muppet Movie - well, that's just good old-fashioned family fun. Not much more to it than that.

The remaining honourable mentions: Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil was a clever little horror-comedy that evoked some great comic moments in its subversion of the killer redneck genre, Man Bites Dog was a very messed-up mockumentary, From Here to Eternity was a fine piece of wartime melodrama that was only really dragged down by executive meddling, Rififi was another slick heist movie that had a great second act involving the main heist being conducted in near-silence but didn't quite stick the first and third acts, and A Perfect World was an interesting enough take on the fugitive road movie.

I have had West of the Tracks and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty on my watchlist for so long. I should watch them rather soon, both films looks pretty radical :)

The Last Bolshevik and Spring in a Small Town looks really interesting!

Quince Tree of the Sun was one of my biggest experiences with my parents this year and one of my favorites of the nineties. My mom actually bought quinces after watching the movie.

I havent seen The River by Renoir yet but The River by Tsai Ming-Liang is really recommendable!

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Great write up Iroquois. I have seen a bunch of what you mentioned. No surprise that my favorites are two of the Hitchcock. I love both Rope and Shadow Of A Doubt. I re-watched A Perfect World about a month ago. I didn't love it like I used to, but still think it is really solid, good movie. I also went through a lot of Ghibli films this year. Including all the Miyazaki and Fireflies. Haven't seen Paprika yet. I grew to respond to Miyazaki quite a bit. I don't think you will be sering him on any of my lists outside of animation anytime soon. I certainly liked a good number of them though. If nothing else it made it so I will be checking out some anime from time to time. I get the appeal for sure.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Strictly first time watches (in order of release):

Bigger than Life (Ray, 1956)
Elevator to the Gallows (Malle, 1958)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)
Sonatine (Kitano, 1993)
Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995)
Ali (Mann, 2001)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese, 2013)
12 Years a Slave (McQueen, 2013)
Boyhood (Linklater, 2014)
Birdman (Innaritu, 2014)

Honourable mentions:
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974)
Boyz N the Hood (Singleton, 1991)
La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995)
Drinking Buddies (Swanberg, 2013)

I did try to be as obscure as possible. Nah, but I think I'd recommend The Last Bolshevik for its focus on a time and place in movie history - something you might appreciate.

Yeah, they were on my watchlists for a long time too, but sometimes you gotta rip off that bandaid despite the runtime - I find I'm usually rewarded when I do.

This list is subject to change, since I could see something mind-blowing in the next few days.

1. On the Waterfront (1954)
2. 12 Angry Men (1957)
3. La Dolce Vita (1960)
4. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
5. Autumn Sonata (1978)
6. The Apartment (1960)
7. Akira (1988)
8. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
9. Le Samouraï (1967)
10. Do the Right Thing (1989)

every movie i saw for the first time this year, ranked. sorry for the long post, but this is the smallest font there is.

1. The Shining
2. Stalker
3. Bigger than Life
4. Apocalypse Now
5. Pierrot Le Fou
6. Life, and Nothing More
7. Citizen Kane
8. The Shop Around the Corner
9. The Graduate
10. Synechdoche, New York
11. The Passion of Joan of Arc
12. Singin’ In the Rain
13. Mulholland Drive
14. The Wrong Guy
15. The Wrong Man
16. 8 1/2
17. Where is the Friend’s House
18. Sweet Smell of Success
19. La Rupture
20. Goodfellas
21. Julien Donkey-Boy
22. The Mortal Storm
23. On the Waterfront
24. Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
25. Stop Making Sense
26. The Wind Will Carry Us
27. Johnny Guitar
28. Close-Up
29. The Wolf of Wall Street
30. Bad Lieutenant
31. Rebel Without a Cause
32. The Conversation
33. Wings of Desire
34. Solaris
35. Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall… and Spring
36. Through the Olive Trees
37. Trouble in Paradise
38. The Double
39. Frances Ha
40. The Sacrifice
41. The Act of Killing
42. I Was Born, But
43. The Heartbreak Kid
44. Birdman
45. The Place Beyond the Pines
46. Blue Ruin
47. Short Term 12
48. This is the End
49. Duel
50. F for Fake
51. The Lego Movie
52. Cruising
53. M
54. The Grand Budapest Hotel
55. Mauvais Sang
56. The One I Love
57. In a Lonely Place
58. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
59. Fallen Angel
60. Yojimbo
61. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
62. Strangers On a Train
63. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
64. Inside llewyn Davis
65. Blue is the Warmest Color
66. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
67. Straw Dogs
68. Shoot the Piano Player
69. Two-Lane Blacktop
70. Dog Day Afternoon
71. The Fisher King
72. Au Revoir Les Enfants
73. A Woman is a Woman
74. Annie Hall
75. Touch of Evil
76. My Dinner with Andre
77. Pain & Gain
78. The Wages of Fear
79. Locke
80. Days of Heaven
81. Misery
82. Contempt
83. Sherlock Jr.
84. The Lusty Men
85. Beyond the Hills
86. Jaws
87. The 400 Blows
88. The Butcher
89. Two Lovers
90. Scenes From a Marriage
91. Badlands
92. The Rambler
93. The Mirror
94. Cool Hand Luke
95. Purple Noon
96. The Comedy
97. Blue Jasmine
98. Kill Bill Vol. 2
99. Black Swan
100. Klute
101. Family Plot
102. Casblanca
103. House
104. Band of Outsiders
105. Dirty Harry
106. They Live By Night
107. The Best Offer
108. Her
109. Atlantic City
110. Taxi Driver
111. Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff
112. Trash Humpers
113. Identity
114. The Swimmer
115. Only Lovers Left Alive
116. The Lady Vanishes
117. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
118. Frenzy
119. Chinatown
120. The Big Lebowski
121. Computer Chess
122. American Hustle
123. Puella Magi Madoka Magica Part 1
124. Autumn Sonata
125. Child’s Play (1972)
126. The Evil Dead
127. The Holy Mountain
128. Hi, Mom!
129. Blue Caprice
130. Observe and Report
131. Borgman
132. Ivan’s Childhood
133. Mud
134. Magic Mike
135. On Dangerous Ground
136. The Grandmaster
137. Guardians of the Galaxy
138. Greenberg
139. Eastern Promises
140. Amadeus
141. Robocop
142. Interstellar
143. Riot in Cell Block 11
144. Vivre Sa Vie
145. Some Like It Hot
146. Fruitvale Station
147. The Driver
148. Escape From Alcatraz
149. Urga
150. The Last Temptation of Christ
151. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
152. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
153. Frankenstein
154. The Spirit of the Beehive
155. Prisoners
156. Nostalghia
157. Ed Wood
158. Letter Never Sent
159. Bastards
160. Casino
161. Gummo
162. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
163. Only God Forgives
164. The Great Beauty
165. The Hedgehog
166. The Draughtsman’s Contract
167. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
168. Sabrina
169. Underground
170. Once Were Warriors
171. Puella Magi Madoka Magica Part 2
172. Captain Phillips
173. Team America: World Police
174. Sansho the Bailiff
175. Evil Dead II
176. The Darjeeling Limited
177. Steamboat Bill Jr.
178. Fantastic Planet
179. Django Unchained
180. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
181. Zero Dark Thirty
182. Nightcrawler
183. The Driller Killer
184. Doctor Zhivago
185. Welcome To New York
186. The Virgin Spring
187. Sahara
188. Naked
189. A Man Escaped
190. Eraserhead
191. Blast of Silence
192. Harakiri
193. Scarface
194. Little Big Man
195. Algiers
196. My Neighbor Totoro
197. 12 Years a Slave
198. The Straight Story
199. The Last Picture Show
200. Mister Lonely
201. The Insider
202. Mystic River
203. Mean Streets
204. Dallas Buyers Club
205. To Live
206. Network
207. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
208. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
209. Mary and Max
210. Foreign Correspondent
211. Donnie Darko
212. Maps to the Stars
213. Escape From Tomorrow
214. The Conformist
215. Nebraska
216. Alphaville
217. How To Train Your Dragon
218. Above Suspicion
219. Kill Bill Vol. 1
220. Stranger By the Lake
221. Unforgiven
222. Cherry Blossoms
223. A Most Wanted Man
224. Manhattan
225. The Apartment
226. Nausicaa
227. Back Street
228. Hotel Rwanda
229. The Departed
230. Primal Fear
231. Godzilla
232. Frozen
233. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
234. West Side Story
235. Five Easy Pieces
236. Philomena
237. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
238. Cries and Whispers
239. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
240. The Negotiator
241. Blow-Up
242. The Crying Game
243. The Way Way Back
244. Army of Darkness
245. MASH
246. The Counselor
247. Killing Them Softly
248. The African Queen
249. True Romance
250. Night Moves (2014)
251. Gone Baby Gone
252. Bad Santa
253. Following
254. Funny Games
255. All is Lost
256. V for Vendetta
257. 300
258. Magic in the Moonlight
259. Santa Sangre
260. Alien
261. Rocky
262. The Dictator
263. The Matrix
264. The Canyons
265. The Purge: Anarchy
266. Divergent
267. Nymphomaniac Pt 1
268. Nymphomaniac Pt 2
269. Andrei Rublev
270. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
271. Stuck in Love
272. The Spectacular Now
273. 42
274. Revolutionary Girl Utena
275. Upstream Color

1. Ran
2. Fantasia
3. Ed Wood
4. Infernal Affairs
5. Trainspotting
6. MASH
7. Monty Python's Life of Brian
8. Raging Bull
9. Grand Budapest Hotel
10. Inside Lweyn Davis

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

@Inmate Thanks for sharing that. You saw a lot of the big boys this year. I was sorry to see The Apartment so low. That is a heck of a year.

@Gatsby Nice list. The bottom three are my favorites by a pretty good margin but I also really enjoy Ed Wood and MASH.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

yeah 2014 was really only the second year that i've really been into film so there's still a lot of big stuff i haven't seen. The Apartment was a little disappointing, but i still liked it and i could seeing liking it more with a rewatch. really the only films on that list that i dislike are the bottom 20 or so, and even then most of them are redeemable. i feel like i'm way too generous with my ratings, but when i try to lower them i realize that i do genuinely enjoy most of what i watch on some level and have a hard time giving below a .

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I sometimes feel like I am that way with ratings too. Then I go on a streak where I hate a few in a row, and I remember yeah I am doing just fine. It is all up to my subjectivity anyway.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I always feel like I need to be less generous with my ratings, but at the same time I genuinely love a lot of what I watch.

It's that time of year again. Hard to believe 2016 is here. These are my top ten films that I watched for the first time in 2015. This doesn't include any 2015 movies because I will make a top ten for that right before the Oscars. It was certainly the year of Noir and Documentaries for me. I saw lots of great stuff though including a new all time top ten. Looks like I will hit about 275 movies watched this year, that was an unthinkable number for me just three years ago. Movies have become the hobby of choice for me and I look forward to beating that number in 2016.

10) American Movie 1999
http://i.imgur.com/G8AIxgG.jpg

9) Thief 1981
http://i.imgur.com/UVf462C.jpg

8) Out Of The Past 1947
http://i.imgur.com/Be0pw09.jpg

7) The Killers 1946
http://i.imgur.com/SNXdQB6.jpg

6) Dear Zachary 2008
http://i.imgur.com/YPg221Y.jpg

5) Man On Wire 2008
http://i.imgur.com/7E1oSoj.jpg

4) Playtime 1967
http://i.imgur.com/p1wTSD6.jpg

3) The Magnificent Ambersons 1942
http://i.imgur.com/v6Xjzsa.jpg

2) In A Lonely Place 1950
http://i.imgur.com/6SB2Hfy.jpg

1) Once Upon A Time In The West 1968
http://i.imgur.com/UVLtVpA.jpg

This is fun, I'm going to look back at my records.

Something like this-

25. Gone Girl (2014)
24. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
23. Hearts and Minds (1975)
22. Nightcrawler (2014)
21. The Drop (2014)
20. From Here to Eternity (1953)
19. Punishment Park (1973)
18. Naked (1993)
17. The Big City (1967)
16. The Quiet Man (1952)
15. The Battle of Algiers (1967)
14. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
13. Some Like it Hot (1959)
12. Late Spring (1949)
11. Boyhood (2014)

10. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ummernight.jpg

9. Harry and Tonto (1974)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ontoposter.jpg

8. Cul-De-Sac (1966)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Cds400x300.jpg

7. An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...FilmPoster.jpg

6. Samurai Rebellion (1967)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...llion_1967.jpg

5. Inherit the Wind (1960)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ind-poster.jpg

4. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...man_poster.jpg

3. Possession (1981)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...film_cover.jpg

2. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...%29_poster.jpg

1. Pather Panchali (1955)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...in_color_1.jpg

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Pretty much these, although I'm sure there are others worthy of mention.

Chronicle of a Disappearance
Minamata
Mandala
Birdman
Arrebato
Inherent Vice
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well
Route One USA
The Long Day Closes
Il Grido
Shara
Twenty Years Late
Une femme douce
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums
Historias extraordinarias
Veronika Voss
The Only Son
Death in Venice
She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps
Drowning by Numbers
The Assassin
Possession

Mine's pretty basic. I really only started watching movies passionately in 2015, so many of my favorites are on here.


1) Drive

https://49.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m...y8g0o1_500.gif

2) Taxi Driver (yes, I'm sorry all! I am still getting through all the classics)

http://media2.giphy.com/media/RajQbPxNxsf84/giphy.gif

3) The Social Network

https://45.media.tumblr.com/ab62a15a...6jz2o1_500.gif

4) Shutter Island

http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu...cgp6o1_500.gif

5) Boogie Nights

https://media.giphy.com/media/12Ree0qCDSa7pC/giphy.gif

6) The Thing

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll...op0bo1_500.gif

7) Dazed and Confused

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md...czh3o1_500.gif

8) 12 Angry Men (sorry again lol)

https://45.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m...xd7fo1_500.gif

9) Rear Window

https://45.media.tumblr.com/c8efd2f9...tnlno1_500.gif

10) The Shining

https://m.popkey.co/152f42/AlKwq.gif

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

No need to be sorry lol, I actually envy you right now because you got to watch all these classics for the first time this year (what an experience huh? :p) and at such a young age.

Which reminds me, I need to post my yearly Top 10 soon.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Yeah man. Five of those are in my 100 so you know I concur. Plus you will find out unless your name is Mark or Holden there are tons of classic masterpieces you haven't seen. Like Gatsby said your starting young too. When your my age you will probably be Mark snd Holden.

https://jailhouseoffice.files.wordpr...x5zo1_1280.jpg

1. It's Such a Beautiful Day
2. Harakiri
3. A Town Called Panic
4. Story of Ricky
5. Hausu
6. Inland Empire
7. Woman in the Dunes
8. Onibaba
9. The Straight Story
10. The Insider

Honourable mentions: The Hill, The King of Kong, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Judgment at Nuremberg, Exit Through the Gift Shop, All Quiet on the Western Front, Throne of Blood, JFK, All the President's Men, Nashville, Being There, Amadeus, Metropolis, Amores Perros, Bronson, The Face of Another, Audition, 3 Idiots, Roman Holiday, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, The Americanization of Emily, and Memories of Murder.

As with last year's post, I have opted to exclude films from both this year and last year.

Now, the reasons...

It's Such a Beautiful Day got the top spot because it was the first film I've seen since establishing my four-out-of-five rule and actively made me break that rule. It's only an hour long, is heavily fragmented, and is mostly about stick figures, but it proved extremely resonant in its depiction of one man and his many, many issues that ranged from a family history of insanity to his own gradually declining mental and physical health. Throw in all sorts of visual experimentation, the most matter-of-fact narrator in existence, and some impressive use of classical music and you have the one and only time where I saw a film in 2015 and immediately decided that it was worthy of the Top 100.

Four of the films on the list are Japanese and they are all appropriately (or inappropriately) captivating and inventive. Harakiri is easily the most formal of the lot with its meticulously-structured narrative being paced extremely well and making for one of the finest demonstrations of dramatic irony I've seen in film. Aside from Harakiri's sombre meditation on honour and death, there is also the twisted Woman in the Dunes, which admittedly moves at a pace best described as glacial but somehow manages to make two people who are stuck in a sand pit for the better part of three hours into compelling drama. Onibaba crafts a very twisted tale involving two women trying to scavenge for a living before having to deal with a relatively unwelcome intruder that maintains its perpetual tension thanks to its shifty characters and hazardous environment. In this company, Hausu may look extremely silly with its absurdist parody of haunted house movies but the visual creativity on display more than makes up for it.

Speaking of absurd, French cartoon A Town Called Panic is another short movie that is probably the purest comedy I've seen all year. With its crude stop-motion animation involving cheap-looking toys, it certainly doesn't look promising, but the rapid-fire humour (which is only aided by the speedy French voice acting rather than hindered) and sheer imagination on display more than make up for any superficial shortcomings and it is definitely one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. Meanwhile, Hong Kong martial-arts movie Story of Ricky plays out like one especially violent and deranged live-action cartoon as it sees the eponymous Ricky take on the many vicious inmates and guards that populate a dystopian prison facility, making for some amusing splatter regardless of the effects' objective quality.

As for the rest - David Lynch cracks the list twice with two very different films. The Straight Story being a bittersweet but fundamentally warm tale of an old man making a perilous cross-country trek on the back of a ride-on mower, while Inland Empire seems him take the Hollywood nightmares of Mulholland Drive and crank them up to 11 into a three-hour fever dream that will (depending on what Lynch does next) serve as the ultimate testament to Lynch's warped genius or will prove a troubling portent for what kind of cinematic lunacy he'll unleash on us next. Rounding out the list is Michael Mann's The Insider - while this can be swapped out with at least ten of the honourable mentions, somehow picking this one feels right at the moment as it features Russell Crowe's best performance, Al Pacino not phoning it in, and Mann's usual technical proficiency in telling this particular story.

As for the honourable mentions - well, I've reviewed all of them so try looking them up if you want to know more.

My favourite movies i've seen the first time this year (excluding 2015 movies):

:
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

+:
Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
The Past (Asghar Farhadi, 2013)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

:
North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
Housebound (Gerard Johnstone, 2014)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)
La Haine (Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995)
Alexander Newski (Sergei Eisenstein/Dmitri Wassiljew, 1938)
Sennentuntschi (Michael Steiner, 2010)
Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone, 1979)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
Night of the Living Dead (George R. Romero, 1968)
All About Eve (Joseph L. Makiewicz, 1950)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)
The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2011)
To Be Or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Buster Keaton/Charles Reisner, 1928)

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

A lot of great first time watches there Max.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I agree. :D

I would say The Omen surprised me the most (damn terrifying!) and Sunset Boulevard stayed the longest with me (i actually think of this movie almost every other day and i saw it several months ago).

Discounting movies actually released this, er, last year, and bearing in mind that I don't keep full records of every film I've seen (although I probably should)...

Festen (1998)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ion_poster.jpg

Tank Girl (1995)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...irl_poster.jpg

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
http://a5.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Video1...er227x227.jpeg

The Way He Looks (2014)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ian_Poster.jpg

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...can_summer.jpg

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
Paragraph 175 (2000)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)

1. Naked - Mike Leigh (top 20 film for me now, already watched it three times and forced everyone i know to watch it so i can discuss it with them. Talked to Swan a bit about it when i was a bit giddy after just watching it too.)
2.Le Samourai - Jean Pierre Melville
3.Army of Shadows - Jean Pierre Melville (Easily my favourite new director this year, both of these blew me away.)
4.Harakiri - Masaki Koboyashi
5.Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
6.An Affair To Remember - Leo McCarey
7.Playtime - Jacques Tati
8.Kwaidan - Masaki Koboyashi
9.Closer - Mike Nichols
10.Going Clear - Alex Gibney (the only 2015 film to make it, easily my fave of the year so far and one of my very favourite documentaries. Don't mind me though i clearly have a weird Gibney fixation.)

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I really need to see Naked this year.

You do ;)

I'm going to try the same as the Immate:

1. The South (Víctor Erice, 1983)
2. Inside Out (Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen, 2015)
3. I walked with a zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
4. The good, the bad and the ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
5. Time of the gypsies (Emir Kusturica, 1988)
6. Witchhammer (Otakar Vávra, 1970)
7. Travelling circus (Linh Viet, 1988)
8. The Lego movie (Philip Lord, Chris Miller & Chris McKay, 2014)
9. The ear (Karel Kachyna, 1970)
10. Death of a cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)
11. Letter never sent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959)
12. From the life of the marionettes, (Ingmar Bergman, 1980)
13. Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962)
14. When the cat comes (Vojtech Jasný, 1963)
15. Raging bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
16. The tale of the fox (Wladyslaw & Irene Starewicz, 1930)
17. Rosaura at 10 o'clock (Mario Soffici, 1958)
18. Poachers (José Luis Borau, 1975)
19. Gintama: The final chapter - Be forever Yorozuya (Yoichi Fujita, 2013)
20. Wreck-it-Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012)
21. Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926)
22. The free will (Matthias Glasner, 2006)
23. The hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)
24. Who framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis, 1988)
25. Irma la douce (Billy Wilder, 1963)
26. Song of the sea (Tomm Moore, 2014)
27. When a woman ascends the stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)
28. Landscape in the mist (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1988)
29. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
30. Napoléon (Abel Gance, 1927)
31. The effect of gamma rays on Man-in-the-Moon marigolds (Paul Newman, 1972)
32. Yokohama shopping journal: Quiet Country Cafe (Tomomi Mochizuki, 2002)
33. The land before time (Don Bluth, 1988)
34. Diabolique (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1955)
35. The little mermaid (Karel Kachyna, 1976)
36. La vie de Bohème (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
37. Heavy traffic (Ralph Bakshi, 1973)
38. The little prince (Mark Osborne, 2015)
39. 10,000 Km. (Carlos Marques-Marcet, 2014)
40. A girl in black (Michael Cacoyannis, 1956)
41. Kayoko's diary (Seiji Arihara, 1991)
42. Three colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)
43. Juha (Aki Kaurismäki, 1999)
44. A woman is a woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)
45. Tangerines (Zaza Urushadze, 2013)
46. The white dove (Frantisek Vácil, 1960)
47. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
48. Sparrows (William Beaudine, 1926)
49. Crulic – The path to beyond (Anca Damian, 2011)
50. It happened in broad daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958)
51. Three wishes for Cinderella (Vaclav Vorlícek, 1973)
52. One Piece: Adventure of Nebulandia (Konosuke Uda, 2015)
53. Un uomo a metà (Vittorio de Seta, 1966)
54. Hair high (Bill Plympton, 2004)
55. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
56. The man who could work miracles (Lothar Mendes, 1936)
57. Son of the White Mare (Marcell Jankovics, 1981)
58. Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
59. Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937)
60. Mother and son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997)
61. Three (Aleksandar Petrovic, 1965)
62. Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi, 1992)
63. The changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)
64. The success (Mauro Morassi & Dino Risi, 1963)
65. The Great War (Mario Monicelli, 1959)
66. Our beloved month of August (Miguel Gomes, 2008)
67. Distant voices, still times (Terence Davies, 1988)
68. King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
69. Rocks in my pockets (Signe Baumane, 2014)
70. The incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
71. Life goes on (Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1963)
72. Crank (Mark Neveldine & Bryan Taylor, 2006)
73. Mad Max: Fury road (George Miller, 2015)
74. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
75. Cold tracks (Arne Skouren, 1962)
76. The Godfather. Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)
77. The we and the I (Michel Gondry, 2012)
78. Big Hero 6 (Chris Williams & Don Hall, 2014)
79. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
80. Ma vie en rose (Alain Berliner, 1997)
81. Brothers and sisters of the Toda family (Yasujiro Ozu, 1941)
82. Cousinhood (Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, 2011)
83. Série noire (Alain Corneau, 1979)
84. Diamonds of the night (Jan Nemec, 1964)
85. Three colors: White (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)
86. Thirst for love (Koreyoshi Kurosawa, 1966)
87. Take care of your scarf, Tatiana (Aki Kaurismäki, 1994)
88. Requisitos para ser una persona normal (Leticia Dolera, 2015)
89. Band of outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
90. Squandered Sunday (Drahomíra Vihanová, 1969)
91. A wind named Amnesia (Kazuo Yamazaki, 1993)
92. Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker, 1980)
93. The Bélier family (Eric Lartigau, 2014)
94. Love actually (Richard Curtis, 2003)
95. La venganza de Don Mendo (Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1963)
96. Two mules for Sister Sara (Don Siegel, 1970)
97. Funeral parade of roses (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)
98. Intimate lighting (Ivan Passer, 1965)
99. Broken silence (Montxo Armendáriz, 2001)
100. 3 bad men (John Ford, 1926)
101. I vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953)
102. The end of August at the Hotel Ozone (Jan Schmidt, 1967)
103. Grey matter (Kivu Ruhorahoza, 2011)
104. La mancha de sangre (Adolfo Best-Maugard, 1937)
105. Trapito (Manuel García Ferré, 1975)
106. The man who had his hair cut short (André Delvaux, 1965)
107. Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943)
108. Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
109. Asterix and the big fight (Philippe Grimond, 1989)
110. A ojos cerrados (Hernán Jiménez, 2010)
111. Blood of the condor (Jorge Sanjinés, 1969)
112. The assassin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2015)
113. Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
114. The cockpit (Various authors with long names, 1993)
115. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2007)
116. X: The man with the X-ray eyes (Roger Corman, 1963)
117. Ashes and diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
118. Star Wars. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)
119. The anchorite (Juan Estelrich, 1976)
120. I even met happy gypsies (Aleksandar Petrovic, 1969)
121. I served the King of England (Jirí Menzel, 2006)
122. Life in shadows (Lorenzo Llobet-Gràcia, 1948)
123. Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967)
124. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
125. An affair of love (Fréderic Fonteyne, 1999)
126. The servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
127. Gintama: The movie (Shinji Takamatsu, 2010)
128. The forty-first (Grigori Chukhrai, 1956)
129. The Book of the Dead (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 2005)
130. A touch of sin (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
131. Lars and the real girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007)
132. Behavior (Ernesto Daranas, 2014)
133. Hal (Ryoutarou Makihara, 2013)
134. Take shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)
135. Ulysses' gaze (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1995)
136. The Saragossa manuscript (Wojciech Has, 1965)
137. Through a glass darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961)
138. Closely watched trains (Jirí Menzel, 1966)
139. Three colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1995)
140. Vertigo (Karel Kachyna, 1963)
141. The quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985)
142. The Philadelphia story (George Cukor, 1940)
143. Time masters (René Laloux, 1982)
144. Ilusión (Daniel Castro, 2013)
145. I killed Einstein, gentlement (Oldrich Lipský, 1970)
146. The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014)
147. The good dinosaur (Peter Sohn, 2015)
148. Alpine fire (Fredi M. Murer, 1985)
149. Knife in the water (Roman Polanski, 1962)
150. Steak (Quentin Dupieux, 2007)
151. Evil Dead 2 (Sam Raimi, 1987)
152. Chance meeting (Joseph Losey, 1959)
153. Sugata Sanshiro (Akira Kurosawa, 1943)
154. The call of the wild (Kozo Morishita, 1981)
155. The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)
156. Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988)
157. Palo Alto (Gia Coppola, 2013)
158. The young one (Luis Buñuel, 1960)
159. The son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2002)
160. Bad taste (Peter Jackson, 1987)
161. Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
162. Phantom boy (Alain Gagnol & Jean-Loup Felicioli, 2015)
163. Days (Aleksandar Petrovic, 1963)
164. Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981)
165. The magic mountain (Anca Damian, 2015)
166. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
167. As tears go by (Wong Kar-wai, 1988)
168. Approved for adoption (Laurent Boileau & Jung Henin, 2012)
169. Back to God's country (David Hartford, 1919)
170. El diablo también llora (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1965)
171. Dangerous moves (Richard Dembo, 1984)
172. The door into summer (Mori Masaki & Toshio Hirata, 1981)
173. Almanya – Welcome to Germany (Yasemin Samdereli, 2011)
174. Chappie (Neil Blomkamp, 2015)
175. The smiling lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931)
176. The one-handed trick (Santiago Zannou, 2008)
177. Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)
178. Iron man (Jon Favreau, 2008)
179. Short peace (Lots of directors, 2013)
180. Dracula (Tod Browning & Karl Freund, 1931)
181. Terkel in trouble (Various authors with long names, 2004)
182. Fatal attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987)
183. Funeral ceremonies (Zdenek Sirovy, 1969)
184. Ode to my father (Youn Jk, 2014)
185. The scent of green papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993)
186. X-men (Bryan Singer, 2000)
187. The mist (John Carpenter, 1980)
188. The little mermaid (Tomoharu Katsumata, 1975)
189. The expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010)
190. Masculin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
191. Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)
192. The Boy (Daniel Monzón, 2014)
193. Star Wars. Episode II: Attack of the clones (George Lucas, 2002)
194. Spetters (Paul Verhoeven, 1980)
195. Asterix versus Caesar (Gaëtan & Paul Brizzi, 1985)
196. The dark crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982)
197. Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
198. The sun in a net (Stefan Uher, 1962)
199. The Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)
200. The Kreutzer sonata (Gustav Machatý, 1926)
201. Hamelín (Carlos Rivero & Alonso Valbuena, 2013)
202. Osamu Tezuka's Buddha - The Great Departure (Kozo Morishita, 2011)
203. The shamer's daughter (Kenneth Kainz, 2015)
204. Life on Earth (Abderrahmane Sissako, 1998)
205. The wild swans (Nobutaka Nishizawa, Yuji Endo, 1977)
206. Frozen city (Aku Louhimies, 2006)
207. From Saturday to Sunday (Gustav Machatý, 1931)
208. A married woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
209. Five men in the circus (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
210. Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)
211. Ndoto za Elibidi (Kamau Wa Ndung'u & Nick Reding, 2010)
212. The Hobbit: The desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013)
213. The truth of lie (Roland Reber, 2011)
214. A cat in Paris (Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol, 2010)
215. The star of Cottonland (Shinichi Tsuji, 1984)
216. Perdiendo el Norte (Nacho G. Velilla, 2015)
217. The captive (Atom Egoyan, 2014)
218. The Fair Barbara (Aleksandr Rou, 1969)
219. Five star stories (Kazuo Yamazaki, 1989)
220. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
221. Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
222. Princess iron fan (Wan Guchan & Wan Laiming, 1941)
223. The Hobbit. An unexpected journey (Peter Jackson, 2012)
224. Stereo (David Cronenberg, 1969)
225. Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)
226. Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vigalondo, 2011)
227. Restless blood (Teuvo Tulio, 1946)
228. Serial (bad) weddings (Philippe de Chauveron, 2014)
229. Una monja y un Don Juan (Mariano Ozores, 1973)
230. Miami vice (Michael Mann, 2006)
231. Heaven and Earth magic (Harry Smith, 1962)
232. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Peter Jackson, 2014)
233. Star Wars. Episode I: The phantom menace (George Lucas, 1999)

Glad to see my nom made your list sean!

Here are my top ten:

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. Rashomon
3. Singin' in the Rain
4. 12 Angry Men
5. The Road Warrior
6. In Bruges
7. The Gold Rush
8. Pinocchio
9. Paths of Glory
10. Rear Window

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I finished the year with 208 watches, 169 of them before I moved into my new house on August 22nd. So needless to say once I moved into my new house I was super busy and couldn't keep up with my pace. I'm going to set my sights to getting to 300 this year, but that may be a lofty expectation. We shall see.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I'm glad to see another Harry and Tonto fan with Cricket. That makes three of us now.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Judgement At Nuremberg is an honorable mention for me. I really liked it, need to watch it again though, dense film.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I'm having trouble remembering everything I saw in 2015. I'm also having a hard time remembering if I saw some movies at the very end of 2014 or the very start of 2015 (it wasn't until a few months into this year that I started trying to keep track of what I had watched) Even so, I'll try my best to compose an interesting list!

1. Birdman (2014)
2. The Rover (2014)
3. The Cat Returns (2002)
4. Cross of Iron (1976)
5. Nightcrawler (2014)
6. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
7. Zulu (1966)
8. '71 (2014)
9. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
10. Whiplash (2014)
11. Inside Out (2015)
12. North by Northwest (1959)
13. Falling Down (1992)
14. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
15. Jane Eyre (1944)

I just know that sometime soon a movie I'll remember will pop into my head and I'll be kicking myself for forgetting to add it! :p

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Really have to watch The Rover. Have you seen Animal Kingdom FW? It is one of my favourites of the decade so far and features my favourite female performance of the decade in Jacki Weaver obviously.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Upon a brief overlook, I tlooks like Late Spring, Once Upon a Time in the West and Boyhood were my top 3 first time watches last year, I could have overlooked something though.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

@Camo

Nah I haven't seen that yet though I have heard a lot about it. One of those movies that I feel like I really need to see!

And also... yup, about 10 minutes after I posted there's 2 that popped into my head:

The Fifth Element (1997)

Affliction (1997)

I'm just gonna mention those—I swear I'm not gonna litter this thread with movies I forgot about! :p

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

A Top 5 films seen for the first time this year would likely include:

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) by Charlie Chaplin
Canyon Passage (1947) by Jacques Tourneur
Colossal Youth (2006) by Pedro Costa
The Docks of New York (1928) by Josef Von Sternberg
Young Mr Lincoln (1939) by John Ford

After many viewings I think that Countess is Chaplin's greatest film, both his most self-critical and reflective, but also joyful and forward looking. Canyon Passage is my favorite of Tourneur's great westerns and its peculiar microcosm contains the best work Tourneur has done on America (along with passages of I Walked with a Zombie). Colossal Youth is one of the most radical works to derive directly from classical Hollywood cinema and embodies and enlightens the past cinema while also expanding its reach and form more than any other film I've seen from the last decade. The Docks of New York is the culmination of Sternberg's excellent silent period, a film about the space between people. Young Mr Lincoln is the greatest of Ford's mythmaking in the dialectic that is formed between its hero and its story, making every image into a convolution.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Here's the list for 2015. I didn't see nearly as much in 2015 as I have in previous years.

1. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Mike Nichols | 1966

2. Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
Kazuhisa Takenouchi | 2003

3. Rosemary's Baby
Roman Polanski | 1968

4. The Player
Robert Altman | 1992

5. The Princess Bride
Rob Reiner | 1987

6. It's Such a Beautiful Day
Don Hertzfeldt | 2012

7. Beasts of No Nation
Cary Joji Fukunaga | 2015

8. Steve Jobs
Danny Boyle | 2015

9. Summertime
David Lean | 1955

10. Three Kings
David O. Russell | 1999

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

I like seeing It's Such a Beautiful Day on multiple lists this year.

10. Grave of the FIreflies

http://i.imgur.com/00t8R6E.gif

Watched this film with no expectations but ended up crying at the end. Too bad it was too late to change my ballot on the MoFo Animated Films list.

9. After Hours

http://i.imgur.com/zwHQ8k9.gif

Criminally underrated Scorcese film with classic screwball comedy.

8. Inside Out

http://i.imgur.com/a54s0I0.gif

I've noticed that I rarely cry when watching live-action films, however animated films seem to turn me into a baby. Inside Out is one of the most sophisticated and rich films in recent years.

7. The Lonely Wife

http://i.imgur.com/UWfXoIe.gif

If Ozu is just plain fried chicken, Satyajit Ray, the director of this masterpiece, is armed with an addictive sweet n spicy sauce. And steroids.

6. Hana Bi

http://i.imgur.com/GEZVpz0.jpg

Seriously I love Takeshi Kitano so much... his style, the silent but deadly prose in his dialogue, the calm but violent shoot-outs are brilliant.

5. Bicycle Thieves

http://i.imgur.com/SJLvbF4.gif

This film is so realistic and effective that you believe the events that happen could have been real. The acting is great not because it has method-acting or usage of fancy body language, but because it's natural. If you observe the conversations between the main character (the dad) and his boy you'll see what I mean.

4. Rio Bravo

http://i.imgur.com/jNA1XKh.gif

I've never really liked characters John Wayne portrayed, but here his trademark I-don't-care nature combined with his hidden affection for people he loves makes Sheriff Chance someone you want to root for. He's also surrounded by a perfect supporting cast and their chemistry explodes (no pun intended) during the wildly entertaining finale.

3. The Third Man

http://i.imgur.com/13qbBc3.gif

I can't believe I didn't watch this classic until this year. Every scene in The Third Man is unbelievably cool and atmospheric. This film also lead to what I consider the best review I've ever written, so there's one more reason to give love.

2. Playtime

http://i.imgur.com/xF6JWXC.gif

There is no proper way to describe Tati's masterpiece. Seeing is believing people. If you want to believe in this film, well, go see it!

1. The Graduate

http://i.imgur.com/cRCdl0y.gif

For the number one spot on my list I struggled to find an answer between The Graduate and Playtime, but ultimately I chose the former because it has a personal connection with me. One more year and I'm going to graduate from a college everyone treats as a pretty good school, thus people have quite a few expectations from me. But honestly, I don't know what to do with my life once I'm out in the world. There's a huge chance that I will end up like Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman). His struggles shown in the film reflect mine. The Graduate is perfect film high in cinematic quality and "personal" quality.

I agree with you, amazing film...

but...

It's not a Miyazaki! It's Takahata's!

Sorry, Asian names all sound the same to me.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Out of the 88 movies I saw for the first time in 2015, I'd have to single out these:

The Hole
Nightcrawler
In Cold Blood
Birdman of Alcatraz
Gone Girl
Andrei Rublev
The Battle of Algiers
The Big Combo
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
The Umbrellas of Charbourg

Honorable mentions: Birdman, Blue Ruin, Inherent Vice...

Harakiri and Das Boot are definitely the top two. I'll come up with a top ten in a little while. In the meantime, here is a Listchallenge list I made of all the films I saw in 2015. How many have you seen?

I love that film but hardly ever see anyone talk about it here. Nice to see you liked it :)

I saw 140 of 176

116 for me

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Damn, only seen 72 of those.

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

22. Beat that! :p

I've seen 128 of 176 movies on your list. (How many I actually liked is probably a much lower number. :( )

Re: Yearly First Viewing Top Tens
 

Only saw 87 of those Mushroom.