Yearly First Viewing Top Tens

More like I figure that new releases can go in a "best of the year" list and this is for anything older than that.

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I do follow the no new releases rule, although I don't think anything from 2020 would have cracked this list anyway.

I watched 327 movies in 2020, another personal best. One of these days I will hit 365. Ozu, Leigh, Godard, Spike Lee, and Fassbnder were my most watched directors. I have really come to appreciate Ozu, even if I don't love all his films.. I would call Leigh a new favorite. I really wish he had more social dramas to dig into. I could watch that stuff from him all day long. One of his films tops my list. My top ten, from the best down.

!. Another Year
2. Tokyo Twilight
3. The Mirror (Pahani)
4. Until The End Of The World
5. Contempt
6. The Heiress
7. Memories Of A Murder
8. Through The Olive Trees
9. In A Year With Thirteen Moons
10. Red Beard

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1. The Gunfighter 1950 Henry King
2. War and Peace 1966 Sergey Bondarchuk
3. The Straight Story 1999 David Lynch
4. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 Richard Brooks
5. The Roaring Twenties 1939 Raoul Walsh
6. Samurai Rebellion 1967 Masaki Kobayashi
7. Lady Snowblood 1973 Toshiya Fujita
8. Inside Moves 1980 Richard Donner
9. Never Cry Wolf 1983 Carroll Ballard
10. Knives Out 2019 Rian Johnson
11. The Big Country 1958 William Wyler
12. My Name Is Nobody 1973 Tonino Valerii
13. Dressed to Kill 1980 Brian De Palma
14. Come and See 1985 Elem Klimov
15. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion 1970 Elio Petri
16. The Human Condition I 1959 Masaki Kobayashi
17. Uncut Gems 2019 Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
18. The Train 1964 John Frankenheimer
19. Paper Moon 1973 Peter Bogdanovich
20. In the Mood for Love 2000 Wong Kar-wai

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I share my Top 10 First Time watches on my podcast (click here), in case anyone wants to listen. But for those that don't, here it is anyway...

1. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
2. Late Spring (1949)
3. Throne of Blood (1957)
4. Luce (2019)
5. Mother (2009)
6. Hell or High Water (2016)
7. Parasite (2019)
8. The Graduate (1967)
9. Jojo Rabbit (2019)
10. The Straight Story (1999)

Like I said on the podcast, 3-10 are very interchangeable. I really didn't give much thought to the ranking. But 1 and 2 were clearly the Top 2.

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Including the holdovers from 2019 that I saw this year, my list would look like this...

1. Paris, Texas
2. Moonlight
3. Parasite
4. Uncut Gems
5. 1917
6. The Handmaiden
7. Do The Right Thing
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
9. The Searchers
10. Drug War

Not anticipating seeing anything in the next week or so that would affect my fav's of the year so here's what I got:

Hm: The Artist, Rope, Jagged, How Green Was My Valley, Silkwood, Color Out of Space, High and Low, Europa Europa, Minority Report, Fantastic Planet, Au Revoir les Enphants, Kirikou and the Sorceress, LaCeremonie, 42nd Street, Waltz With Bashir

And the top ten:

10. Memories of Murder


9. Z


8. Hara-Kiri


7. The Manchurian Candidate


6. T-Men


5. Porco Rosso


4. It's Such a Beautiful Day


3. Persona


2. Yojimbo


1. The Cranes are Flying

My top 10 first time watches of the year:

10. Nightmare Alley (1947)
9.The Times of Harvey Milk
8. Jacob’s Ladder
7. The Cranes are Flying
6. Come and See
5. I, Daniel Blake
4. The Swimmer
3. Fail-Safe
2. Nomadland
1. A Face in the Crowd

I’ll post mine later but it’s more likely going to be about top 25 and change.

It's unlikely my list will change in the next several days, but I'll wait till January to post it anyways.

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Still things I'm planning to watch this year but I'm not predicting any of them cracking the top 10 so I'ma do this now.

10. Diabel (1972, Andrzej Żuławski)


09. El sur (1983, Victor Erice)


08. Sleep Has Her House (2017, Scott Barley)


07. I Like Life A Lot (1977, Kati Macskássy)

06. The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020, Catarina Vasconcelos)


05. The First Movie on the Internet: Volumes (A) (B) (C) (D) (2020, David Blair)
(can't find a screenshot and I'm too lazy to get one myself)

04. Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012, Nobuhiko Obayashi)


03. Behindert (1974, Stephen Dwoskin)


02. Last and First Men (2020, Jóhann Jóhannsson)


01. Daimajin (1966, Kimiyoshi Yasuda)

Here it is! My top 25 plus (aka I cheated) I watched around 400 films this year not counting rewatches, and these are the films that stood out!

HM: Frances Ha, The Secret in their Eyes, the Life and Death of Col Blimp, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Tower.

25. Ms 45 ( Abel Ferrara 1981)
24. Alexandira, Why? ( Youssef Chahine, 1978, Egypt)
An Egyptian Story ( 1982)
Alexandria, Now and Forever (1989)
23. Heart of Glass ( Werner Herzog, 1976, Germany)
Stroszek (1977)
22. Audition ( Takashi Miike, 1999, Japan)
21. Spotlight ( Tom McCarthy, 2015)
20. The Bicycle Thieves ( Vittorio De Sica, 1948, Italy)
19. An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim 2006)
18. The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976, France)
17. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao, 2020)
16. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)
15. The Assassin ( Hou Hsiao-Hsien. 2015, Taiwan)
14. Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994, Taiwan)
13. Paper Moon ( Peter Bogdanovich 1973)
12. Oedipus Rex ( Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967, Italy)
11. Ace in the hole ( Billy Wilder, 1951)
Sweet Smell of Success ( Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)
10. Ashes and Diamonds ( Jerzy Kryzewski, 1958, Poland)
Cold War ( Pawel Pawilkowski, 2018, Poland)
9. La Dolce Vita ( Federico Fellini, 1960, Italy)
Rome, Open City (Roberto Rosellini, 1945, Italy)
8. Star Man (John Carpenter, 1984)
7 Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade (Hiroyuki Okiura, 1999, Japan)
The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey, 2017)
6. Stalker (Andre Tarkovsky, 1979, Soviet union)
The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail kalatozov, 1957, Soviet Union)
5. Witchhammer (Otakar Vavra, 1970, Czechoslovakia)
4. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966, Sweden)
3. A Time to Live, A Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien 1985, Taiwan)
Dust in the Wind (1986)
Daughter of the Nile (1987)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl T. Dreyer, 1928, France)
Vampyr ( 1932, France/Germany)
1. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962, Japan)
Polytechnique (Dennis Villeneuve, 2009, Canada)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980, Britain/America)
Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, 1956, India).

yes, a 4 way tie because each one were moving and amazing in their own ways. Too hard to pick between them, so why not go for a tie?

Eh, I'll just post it now. Don't feel like watching anything else today:

1. Double Indemnity
2. The Travelling Players
3. The Graduate
4. High Noon
5. Midnight Cowboy
6. The Return
7. The Celebration
8. All About Eve
9. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
10. I Am Cuba

Aparajito
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Blue Angel
The Godfather (yes, I finally watched it)
The Grapes of Wrath
Jeanne Dielman
Kings of the Road
The Last Picture Show
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sherlock, Jr.
War and Peace

Also, I watched 326 films this year for the first time (not counting rewatches). This isn't nearly as much as some of you, but since my original goal was to watch at least 200 films, I'm satisfied.

https://www.listchallenges.com/every...-for-the-first

1. High and Low
2. F For Fake
3. Flowers of Shanghai
4. Ashes and Diamonds
5. Still Walking
6. Prince: Sign O' The Times
7. Pulse
8. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
9. Paisan
10. Son of the White Mare

Honourable mentions: The Unbelievable Truth, David Holzman's Diary, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Watermelon Woman, Strike, Eureka, Mind Game, Fantastic Planet, Amarcord, Dersu Uzala, Europa, Face to Face, Milennium Mambo, The Nun (1966), 2046, The Time to Live and the TIme to Die, Caché, To Be or Not To Be, Kaili Blues, What TIme Is It There?, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, Secret Sunshine, Small Axe: Red White and Blue, Small Axe: Lovers Rock, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood HIlls, Caro Diario, Rebels of the Neon God, Desert Hearts, The Blackout, Moonlighting, Êl, Day For Night, Farewell My Concubine, The Beguiled, Punishment Park, A Brighter Summer Day, The Circle (2000), Love & Basketball, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Night Moves (1975), Polytechnique, To Live, Gohatto, The Emigrants, The Devils, Colossal Youth, Flesh + Blood, Buddies, The One-Armed Swordsman, That Obscure Object of Desire, La Belle Noiseuse, The Phantom of Liberty, Tristana, Five Elements Ninja, La Grande Bouffe, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, A Snake of June, Nostalghia, Nobody Knows, I Vitelloni, The Trial (1962), White Dog, Shock Corridor, Black Girl, Rosetta, The Big City, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, About Elly, The Wedding Banquet, A Chinese Ghost Story, A Chinese Ghost Story II, A Chinese Ghost Story III, Stray Dog, Hell in the Pacific, I Am Twenty, Millennium Actress, Leon Morin, Priest, Drunken Angel, Pastoral: To Die in the Country, An Autumn Afternoon, Rouge, The Boxer's Omen, The Big Red One, Femme Fatale, Bitter Moon, I AM Cuba, Streetwise, The Red Desert, Love Streams, Closely Watched Trains, La Strada

I had over 650 first-time viewings this year and a lot of them were good to the extent that even limiting my top ten to be representative - one per direct, one musical, one silent, one animation, etc. - still doesn't seem like it sufficiently encompasses just how much great stuff I managed to fit in in 2021. Kurosawa, Hou, Kore-eda...man, I could shuffle around so much of the top ten with these HMs but man that is a lot. Good year. Not much more to it than that.

Didn't get to watch a lot in 2021 but easily found 10 movies I loved. In no particular order-
Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Black Rain (1989) (Imamura)
Sundays and Cybele (1962)
La Ceremonie (1995)
Magical Girl (2014)
Clash (2016)
Underground (1995)
The Truth (1960)
Three Colors: White (1994)
Three Colors Red: (1994)

Honorable mentions-
H-8 (1958)
Bacurau (2019)
Wrong Turn (2021)
Another Round (2020)
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)
Trauma (2017)
Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
Show Me Love (1998)

Out of my top 10, those last 2 I watched for the foreign language countdown, but the other 8 I watched from recommendations.

My best first time viewings for the year: https://letterboxd.com/the_rock/list...wings-of-2021/


If I had to do a top ten:



Corruption
Dark of the Sun
The Decline of Western Civilization
Doriana Grey
His Girl Friday
Modern Times
Nightdreams
Runaway Nightmare
War and Peace
West Side Story

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In no particular order...

One Cut of the Dead
In the Mood for Love
A Streetcar Named Desire
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Bicycle Thieves
Witness for the Prosecution
Parasite
It's a Wonderful Life
Dead Ringers
The Straight Story

Honourable mentions...

Paris, Texas
Quills
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Charulata
Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice
Say Anything
Ghost
Land of Mine

I entered 2021 having seen zero Kurosawa films, and within the year watched pretty much all of them, so that's something I'm proud of. Asking me to rank them would just be cruel though.

Apart from that, I finally saw The Conversation for the first time and that was an instant love connection. Currently my favorite FFC film.

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