I’ve decided to go ahead and post the rest of the Movies Of the Year lists, if only for organizational reasons. It’ll be easier to keep track of things if I can slot them into the list as I watch them, instead of waiting until I get around to writing that particular year. I’m still going to keep up with the year by year countdowns, so this is just the rankings. All the lists, from 1915 through 2006 can always be found on the sidebar.

Here’s how it works: A film’s year is determined by what year IMDB says it is. Not because IMDB is especially accurate, but just because I need some easy to use way to figure out what movies I’ve seen and when they’re from, and IMDB’s the easiest and most comprehensive resource there is. So, I browse IMDB by year, pick out all the movies I’ve seen (and the ones I think I should see) and put them in some kind of order.

The order isn’t definitive: ranking works of art is not meant to be a hierarchical activity, but rather an organizational one. It gives me a chance to write about some movies. It’s interesting trivially and comparatively to see what movies came out at the same time, to see the progression of film history. And lists are just plain fun to argue over. They are meant to be conversation starters, not finishers. I don’t have any particular criteria for what ranks above what, it’s just my own subjective opinion, informed by a reasonable knowledge of film and film history (though not nearly what it should be, as you can see from the Unseen lists in the individual Movies Of The Year entries).

The rankings change over time: when I see a new movie from a year I’ve already posted, I add it to The Big List here. Sometimes I’ll see a movie again and my opinion of it will change, or my feelings about a film will evolve over time, and so I’ll move it up or down its list here as well. The Big List is, and always will be, a work in progress.

1915:

1. The Cheat
2. A Fool There Was
3. The Birth Of A Nation

1916:

1917:

1. The Immigrant
2. The Cure

1918:

1. A Dog’s Life

1919:

1. Broken Blossoms
2. When The Clouds Roll By

1920:

1. One Week
2. Dr. Jeckyll And Mr. Hyde
3. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

1921:

1. The Kid
2. The Play House
3. The ‘High Sign’
4. The Sheik

1922:

1. Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror
2. Nanook Of The North
3. Cops
4. Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler
5. The Blacksmith

1923:

1. Our Hospitality
2. The Three Ages
3. The Balloonatic

1924:

1. Sherlock, Jr.
2. Greed

1925:

1. Battleship Potemkin
2. Seven Chances
3. The Gold Ryuh
4. The Phantom Of The Opera

1926:

1. Faust

1927:

1. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans
2. The General
3. Metropolis
4. It

1928:

1. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. The Circus
4. Speedy

1929:

1. The Man With A Movie Camera
2. Blackmail
3. Pandora’s Box
4. The Coconuts

1930:

1. The Dawn Patrol
2. Animal Crackers
3. All Quiet On The Western Front
4. Abraham Lincoln

1931:

1. City Lights
2. M
3. Monkey Business
4. Frankenstein
5. The Public Enemy
6. Night Nurse
7. Little Caesar
8. The Criminal Code
9. Arrowsmith

1932:

1. Scarface
2. Trouble In Paradise
3. Boudu Saved From Drowning
4. Vampyr
5. Horse Feathers
6. Blonde Venus
7. The Old Dark House
8. Bill Of Divorcement
9. Rain
10. Grand Hotel
11. Freaks

1933:

1. Duck Soup
2. King Kong
3. 42nd Street
4. Baby Face
5. Golddiggers Of 1933
6. Queen Christina
7. Little Women
8. She Done Him Wrong

1934:

1. L’Atalante
2. The Thin Man
3. Judge Priest
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much
5. Twentieth Century
6. It Happened One Night
7. A Lost Lady
8. The Lost Patrol
9. The Gay Divorcee
10. Death Takes A Holiday

1935:

1. Top Hat
2. The 39 Steps
3. The Devil Is A Woman
4. The Informer
5. Sylvia Scarlett
6. Mutiny On The Bounty
7. A Night At The Opera
8. Captain Blood
9. Mark Of The Vampire

1936:

1. Modern Times
2. Swing Time
3. Sisters Of Gion
4. Fury
5. Follow The Fleet
6. Last Of The Mohicans
7. My Man Godfrey
8. After The Thin Man
9. Mary Of Scotland
10. The Garden Of Allah
11. The Petrified Forest

1937:

1. The Awful Truth
2. The Grand Illusion
3. Snow White And The Seven Dwarves
4. The Hurricane
5. A Star Is Born
6. Shall We Dance
7. Pepe le Moko
8. A Day At The Races
9. Nothing Sacred
10. Stage Door
11. Lost Horizon
12. Stella Dallas

1938:

1. Bringing Up Baby
2. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
3. Alexander Nevsky
4. The Lady Vanishes
5. You Can’t Take It With You
6. Angels With Dirty faces
7. Holiday

1939:

1. The Rules Of The Game
2. Young Mr. Lincoln
3. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
4. Stagecoach
5. Ninotchka
6. The Story Of The Late Chrysanthemums
7. Only Angels Have Wings
8. Love Affair
9. Destry Rides Again
10. Gunga Din
11. The Wizard Of Oz
12. Goodbye Mr. Chips
13. The Women
14. Jamaica Inn
15. The Roaring Twenties
16. The Four Feathers
17. Gone With The Wind
18. Wuthering Heights
19. Man In The Iron Mask

1940:

1. Fantasia
2. Rebecca
3. The Shop Around The Corner
4. The Philadelphia Story
5. His Girl Friday
6. The Bank Dick
7. Pinocchio
8. The Thief Of Baghdad
9. The Long Voyage Home
10. The Grapes Of Wrath
11. The Great Dictator
12. The Mark Of Zorro
13. The Mortal Storm
14. Foreign Correspondent
15. The Sea Hawk
16. Dark Command
17. Santa Fe Trail

1941:

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Loyal 47 Ronin
3. The Lady Eve
4. The Maltese Falcon
5. Suspicion
6. Sullivan’s Travels
7. Ball Of Fire
8. The Shanghai Gesture
9. 49th Parallel
10. How Green Was My Valley
11. Meet John Doe
12. Dumbo
13. High Sierra

1942:

1. Casablanca
2. The Palm Beach Story
3. I Married A Witch
4. Cat People
5. This Gun For Hire
6. The Magnificent Ambersons
7. Woman Of The Year
8. Bambi
9. Yankee Doodle Dandy
10. For Me And My Gal

1943:

1. The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp
2. Day Of Wrath
3. I Walked With A Zombie
4. Shadow Of A Doubt
5. Sanshiro Sugata
6. Hangmen Also Die!
7. Cabin In The Sky
8. The 7th Victim
9. Meshes Of The Afternoon
10. The Leopard Man
11. Phantom Of The Opera

1944:

1. A Canterbury Tale
2. Ivan The Terrible Part 1
3. To Have And Have not
4. Laura
5. Double Indemnity
6. Lifeboat
7. Gaslight
8. Arsenic & Old Lace
9. Meet Me In St. Louis
10. Henry V
11. Murder, My Sweet
12. The Three Caballeros

1945:

1. Children Of Paradise
2. The Men Who Tread On The Tiger’s Tail
3. I Know Where I’m Going!
4. Brief Encounter
5. Rome, Open City
6. They Were Expendable
7. Detour
8. The Clock
9. Spellbound
10. The Southerner
11. My Name Is Julia Ross
12. The Spiral Staircase
13. Mildred Pierce
14. Back To Bataan
15. Objective: Burma!
16. The Lost Weekend

1946:

1. The Big Sleep
2. It’s A Wonderful Life
3. A Matter Of Life And Death
4. Notorious
5. Paisan
6. The Killers
7. Gilda
8. The Stranger
9. Beauty And The Beast
10. My Darling Clementine
11. Tomorrow Is Forever
12. Song Of The South
13. The Best Years Of Our Lives
14. The Postman Always Rings Twice
15. A Night In Casablanca

1947:

1. Black Narcissus
2. Out Of The Past
3. The Lady from Shanghai
4. Monsieur Verdoux
5. T-Men
6. Born To Kill
7. Dark Passage
8. Gentlemen’s Agreement
9. Railroaded!

1948:

1. The Red Shoes
2. Red River
3. Rope
4. Fort Apache
5. Macbeth
6. Portrait Of Jennie
7. Force Of Evil
8. He Walked By Night
9. The Pirate
10. The Naked City
11. Bicycle Thieves
12. Hamlet
13. They Live By Night
14. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
15. 3 Godfathers
16. Key Largo
17. Berlin Express
18. A Foreign Affair
19. Easter Parade
20. The Three Musketeers

1949:

1. The Third Man
2. Late Spring
3. Stray Dog
4. The Set-Up
5. Jour de fête
6. Gun Crazy
7. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
8. Kind Hearts And Coronets
9. Adam’s Rib
10. Battleground
11. The Fountainhead
12. White Heat
13. On The Town
14. Sands Of Iwo Jima
15. The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad
16. Knock On Any Door
17. Take Me Out To The Ballgame

1950:

1. Rashomon
2. All About Eve
3. Harvey
4. Winchester ’73
5. Stromboli
6. In A Lonely Place
7. The Asphalt Jungle
8. Sunset Blvd.
9. Rio Grande
10. The Father Of The Bride
11. Cinderella
12. Born Yesterday
13. Where Danger Lives
14. DOA

1951:

1. The River
2. The Thing From Another World
3. Flying Leathernecks
4. Strangers On The Train
5. Diary Of A Country Priest
6. The Lavender Hill Mob
7. The Tales Of Hoffman
8. An American In Paris
9. The Day The Earth Stood Still
10. Alice In Wonderland
11. His Kind Of Woman
12. The Mating Season
13. The Tall Target
14. A Streetcar Named Desire
15. The African Queen
16. Miss Julie
17. Royal Wedding
18. A Place In The Sun
19. The Man From Planet X

1952:

1. Singin’ In The Rain
2. Ikiru
3. The Quiet Man
4. Othello
5. Limelight
6. Bend Of The River
7. On Dangerous Ground
8. Europa ’51
9. The Life Of Oharu
10. Rancho Notorious
11. The Big Sky
12. Monkey Business
13. The Narrow Margin
14. Angel Face
15. Clash By Night
16. The Bad And The Beautiful
17. High Noon

Been crazy busy what with Metro Classics and Potter and Transformers and the old five year wedding anniversary a few days ago, but here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been watching over the last few weeks.

Bend Of The River – Much more to my liking as Anthony Mann Westerns go. James Stewart stars as an outlaw trying to make good as a wagon train guide along the Columbia River. Double crossed by badder guys than him, Stewart memorably goes a bit nuts on a mountainside. Lots of action and the kind of moral complexity you look for in a Mann-Stewart film.

The Southerner – The first American Jean Renoir film I’ve seen, it’s the simple story of a sharecropping family trying to survive. It’s got the director’s trademark humanism, but is, perhaps interestingly, an all-white story with an all-white cast(e). Good, but still the worst Renoir I’ve seen.

Early Spring – Part of Criterion Eclipse boxset of Yasujiro Ozu’s late films, possibly he best DVD purchase I’ve made all year. Like all Ozu films (as far as I know) it’s a middle-class melodrama, this time centered around a salaryman’s relationship with is with and the affair he has with a typist at the office. Some may claim Douglas Sirk as the king of the melodrama, but while I like Sirk, I’ll take Ozu every time. The #2 film of 1956.

High Sierra – Mediocre Humphrey Bogart proto-noir about a bad guy on the run from the law. Costars Ida Lupino and directed by Raoul Walsh from a John Huston screenplay. John Ford said he didn’t like Huston because he was a “faker”. I do and don’t know what that means.

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer – Certainly better than the last one. I admire the lack of pretension and running time in a comic book movie, especially after dealing with the bloat that is Spiderman 3. But the ending doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and the guy who play Dr. Doom is freakin’ terrible.

Tokyo Twilight – As dark and as epic as Ozu gets, this brilliant film follows the melodramatic lives of a middle class Tokyo family. There’s also abortions and suicides and whores and more. The #6 film of 1957.

The Seventh Victim – Another Val Lewton horror film, this one about a girl being hunted by Satanists. Not as good as the two Tourneur classics (Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie) but that’s an unfair standard to hold any film to.

Father Of The Bride – The Vincent Minnelli version, with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Of course it’s better than the Steve Martin one. Tarcy’s always great and Minnelli’s densely-packed black and white photography is often amazing.

The Pit And The Pendulum – Another Roger Corman Poe adaptation starring Vincent Price. While it isn’t quite as good as Masque Of The red Death, it’s pretty great, with some wonderful expressionist sets and reasonably good performances from the non-Price actors. The #9 film of 1961.

Five Fingers Of Death – The original title, apparently of this Shaw brothers classic is King Boxer, but I like the US title better so I’m sticking with it. This was the first kung fu film to breakthrough in the US. Two rival schools fight a martial arts tournament, more or less. Except the bad guys do a lot of killing and eyeball plucking along the way. Great fun. The #5 film of 1972.

The One-Armed Swordsman – A bit less successful, though still very fine, is this earlier Shaw Brothers film about the eponymous maimed hero who overcomes his handicap to save his master and defeat the evildoers. A bit overlong, but the lead performance by Jimmy Wang Yu is pretty good. The #13 film of 1967.

Paris, je t’aime – Omnibus film made for the Cannes film festival is pretty entertaining, containing 18 short films by accomplished directors, each centered on a district of the City Of Lights. Alexander Payne’s bittersweet story of an American tourist having an existential globalist epiphany is easily the best of them. But Vincenzo Natali’s vampire fairy tale with Elijah Wood, Tom Tykwer’s pomo relationship joke with Natalie Portman, Juliette Binoche’s performance in Nobohiro Suwa story about overcoming grief with a cowboy Willem Dafoe and Walter Salles’s Hou-esque story about an immigrant nanny. Most of the other shorts were entertaining, though Christopher Doyle’s fantasy of dancing hair stylists was just plain confusing. With a late night Monday audience that was really into it, one of the more enjoyable theatre-going experiences I’ve had in awhile. The #15 film of 2006.

The Tarnished Angels – Based on a William Faulkner novel, this Douglas Sirk film follows the relationship between a journalist and a Depression Era stunt pilot and his family, notably the hot wife he treats like crap. The lead performances are very good (Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone, reunited from Written On The Wind) and Sirk’s black and white ‘Scope compositions are stunning. The #5 film of 1958.

Ratatouille – Quite possibly the best Pixar film thus far. Directed by Brad Bird, it’s a simple story of a rat who wants to cook that manages to touch on art and community and family and identity and freedom and corporatism and criticism while masquerading as fun for the whole family slapstick. Most Pixar films have only one idea and that idea gets pounded into the ground until even the slowest kid in the audience understands that life in the fast lane loses some old highway magic, or whatever. Ratatouille overflows with ideas, and for the most part, they fly by: raising questions more than pounding answers.

The Good Shepherd – Very slick looking and surprisingly well-directed by Robert DeNiro, this story of the early days of the CIA fails on the level of plot and structure. A good performance from Matt Damon as the cipher at the center of the film, though his character is burdened with a cheesy Psych 101 backstory and an inexplicable relationship to Angelina Jolie (why does she like him? Why doesn’t he like her??) The kind of film you spend the 20 minutes after watching nitpicking the ridiculous plot holes and contrivances. The #25 film of 2006.

Toy Story 2 – Certainly better than the first one. There’s less sap to this sequel, and the sheer number of sci-fi film references is a lot of fun. But still at 92 minutes, it feels like it’s at least 20 minutes too long. I think it’s a failing of director John Lassiter, both the two Toy Storys and Cars suffer from Repetitive Theme Explication Syndrome. The #27 film of 1999.

Finding Nemo – Great looking Pixar film that’s, I think, the best of the non-Brad Bird films. The story’s a simple quest/coming of age story, but in managing to stick to the story action it avoids the preachiness that some other Pixar films suffer from. Most of the voice actors are pretty good, especially Willem Dafoe (are you ever not happy to discover Willem Dafoe’s in a film you’re watching?) Ellen DeGeneres is generally annoying though. The #14 film of 2003.

Transformers – It’s no Armageddon, unfortunately. The first hour or so of Michael Bay’s movie of a TV series designed to sell a toy is a lot of fun, with Shia LaBeouf playing the inevitable geeky teen who gets caught up in the action adventure (all while trying to impress a girl, naturally). There’s some pleasant comedy with a car stereo and some giant robots in a lawn and John Turturro being really weird, but once the film turned into non-stop action mode, I lost interest. While Bay had slowed down his peripatetic camera for the first half, the second half is so clumsily edited as to be incomprehensible. The CGI is really impressive, but all the robots look the same. And none of them have any interesting personalities (absolutely no character for the giant shape-shifting robots).

Bells Are Ringing – Overlong Vincente Minnelli musical that features some really great music by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (Singin’ In The Rain, The Band Wagon). Judy Holliday plays a answering service operator who gets involved in her clients lives and manages to fall in love under false pretenses with a writer played by Dean Martin. The actors are fine and Minnelli’s terrific, but the song “The Party’s Over” may be Comden and Green’s best. The #11 film of 1960.

Love Affair – The original version of Leo McCarey’s film that’s been remade three times (as An Affair To Remember, by McCarey himself, as Sleepless In Seattle by Nora Ephron and as Love Affair with Warren Beatty and Annette Benning.) This one stars Irenne Dunne and Charles Boyer, they meet on a boat and even thought they’re engaged to other people, fall in love. They agree to meet 6 months after returning to New York at the Empire State Building, but that doesn’t quite work out. I still prefer McCarey’s remake, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but very admirable in this film is its efficiency, with just as much plot and emotion as the other film, the film flies by at under 90 minutes. Yet another great film from that year 1939.

Designing Woman – Minor Minnelli? Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck star as a mismatched pair of newlyweds in this mild comedy. He’s a sportswriter, she’s a fashion designer. Gasp! A woman with a job! Comedy ensues. There are also gangsters and a wholly unattractive ex-girlfriend that for some reason Bacall is threatened by. The #20 film of 1957.

Yankee Doodle Dandy – Well, the AFI’s twice named it one of the best 100 “American” films of all-time, so it must be good, right? Well, Cagney’s great, otherwise its a pretty standard jingoistic biopic.

Equinox Flower – Another film in the Ozu Eclipse box, this pone about the hypocrisies of a businessman father in his attitudes toward arranged marriage. He advises his friends daughters to marry for love, but becomes outraged when his own daughter wants to do exactly that. The most powerful moments, though, are the businessman and his friends reminiscing, drinking and singing over their youth in the war. The #7 film of 1958.

All That Heaven Allows – Douglas Sirk melodrama about a wealthy widow (Jane Wyman) who falls in love with the Thoreuvian tree farmer Rock Hudson, and has to choose between social pressure and the beatnik. Not helping matters are her fickle, flighty children. It’s difficult to tell why Hudson likes Wyman so much, but the beauty of the film (lots of mirrors!) is undeniable. The #9 film of 1955.

This Gun For Hire – Speaking of beauty, Veronica Lake stars in this pseudonoir about a hired killer who gets double-crossed and has to kill the badder guys before the cops kill him. Lake plays the singing magician who gets hired by the FBI (apparently) to get evidence on what secrets the badder guys are selling to the Russians (chemical weapons, it turns out). Alan Ladd’s performance as the killer, nicely named “Raven”, made him a star. Directed by Frank Tuttle (Hell On Frisco Bay, The Glass Key) from a novel by Graham Greene.

Spielberg On Spielberg – Thoroughly mediocre Richard Shickel TCM documentary in which the director comments on a number of his films, but doesn’t really bring up anything new. Notably, he calls Saving Private Ryan a tribute to his father and the Greatest Generation, and doesn’t mention anything about war crimes or wanting to show how horrible war was, but wanted the young people in the audience to respect those who fought the war.

Police Story – On the one hand, this Jackie Chan-directed action film is a prime example of the protofascist cop genre that was so popular in the 70s and 80s (Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Police Academy, etc) as Chan plays a cop who goes completely off the rails, kidnaps his superior officer at gunpoint, proceeds to capture the bad guys and then beat the hell out of them after they’ve surrendered. On the other hand, Jackie Chan is totally insane and this film has some of the most amazing stunt work in any film I’ve ever seen. He’s got at least one great sequence of physical comedy to leaven his irritatingly constant camera mugging, and the film costars Maggie Cheung (very young but still awesome in the generic HK action girlfriend role) and Brigitte Lin. The #4 film of 1985.

A Dog’s Life – Charlie Chaplin adopts a dog, and the two seek love and food in this minor feature. Humorous at times, but nothing special for Chaplin.

Jamaica Inn – Curiously weak Alfred Hitchcock film with a bizarrely made-up Charles Laughton as the lord of a coastal British village who covertly runs a rings of pirates who lure ships onto the rocks, kill the sailors and steal their cargo. When Maureen O’Hara (in her screen debut) comes to town and falls in league with an undercover cop, things start to fall apart and Laughton begins to lose it. There are some fine, emotionally intense scenes, and Hitchcock is always an interesting director, but the film doesn’t really standout. I blame Robert Newton as the bland hero/cop.

Police Story 2 – This sequel has a few good fight scenes, but none of the mania of Chan’s previous film. Maggie Cheung is back, though. in another fine performance with a cliché part. Good, but not as mind-blowing as the first one. The #18 film of 1988.

Night Nurse – Barbara Stanwyck becomes the eponymous health care provider who gets in the way of Clark Gable’s scheme to poison a little girl and run away with her liqueured-up mom. A fine film with a fair amount of pre-Code transgressiveness. Directed by William Wellman.

A Lost Lady – Another early Stanwyck, and though it’s post-code, I liked it a lot better. She plays a depressed woman (her fiancé is killed by a jealous husband moments before their wedding) who meets Frank Morgan in Europe. He teaches her that life’s worth living, and she marries him out of friendship. Then, inevitably, she meets a handsome aviator and has an affair. Stanwyck and Morgan were both terrific actors (even at this early stage of her career) and it’s their performances that makes the melodrama work. Based on a Willa Cather novel.

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix – I’m still waiting for a great Harry Potter film. The first one had it’s flaws but I was totally charmed by it. The second was just treading water. The third, by Alfonso Cuarón was pretty good, directed with a great deal of style and bringing some darkness and maturity to the series. But the last two films, hampered by the need to adapt massive tomes into two and a half hour films choose to simplify to the point of cheese. Rather than make the films more efficient by cutting out all that’s unnecessary, they make the films more simplistic by ripping all the emotional and narrative complexity out of the stories. The fifth book, on which this film is ostensibly based, is the darkest of any of the Harry Potter books, creating an effective facsimile of the angst and anger known to every 15 year old. There are hints of that anger in the first few minutes of this film, but after Potter begins teaching his classes, that emotional current entirely disappears. All that follows is plot. Someday there will be a good Potter film.

The Big Combo – Joseph H. Lewis’s very black film noir stars Richard Conte as a crime boss being hunted by a persistent cop played by Cornel Wilde. A very taut 84 minutes long, filled with some of the darkest shadows and heartless characters I’ve seen in a noir. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman play two of Conte’s henchmen who are generally thought to be gay, which is why TCM played the movie for the first time ever last month. The #14 film of 1955.

Decision At Sundown – One of the seven Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher westerns. In this one, Scott rides into town and breaks up a wedding so he can declare his intention to kill the groom. It seems the groom slept with Scott’s wife while he was away fighting the Civil War, then killed herself when he came back. But what no one wants to tell Scott is, well, his wife was a slut and slept with any number of men while he was gone. Still, the local townspeople steer Scott into a showdown with the groom, since they don;t like the guy either and would rather get rid of him. Great complexity from a simple setup. The #9 film of 1957.

Comanche Station – The last of the Scott-Boetticher films. In what could almost be a sequel to The Searchers, Scott plays a man whose wife was kidnapped by Comanche and spends 10 years rescuing any white women he can from them (by trading, not shooting). When he rescues the very hot Nancy Gates and is on his way to return her to her husband, Claude Aikens comes along with two young gunmen and schemes to kill Scott and Gates and get the reward money for himself. Boetticher shoots the finale in what appears to be the same location as the end of Seven Men From Now, an alien amphitheater of round rocks surrounding a scrubland plain. Like with all his films, the action is as carefully designed as the character relationships, and out of simple straightforward setups grow profound resonances. The #10 film from 1960.

Rain – This 1932 film, in a great print on TCM has some impressive camera movement and expressiveness for the time from director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front, Ocean’s 11). Joan Crawford plays a wiseguy prostitute on the precipitation-heavy island on Pongo Pongo who becomes the target of a soul saving by raving minister Walter Huston. The local sailors and libertarians to their best to rescue Crawford from morality, but she can take care of herself.

The Man From Planet X – This low budget Edgar G. Ulmer sci-fi film is apparently one of the first alien invasion films. There’s not much good in the way of plot or acting, but Ulmer was a visual genius and the production design is spooky despite the cheapness.

And now playing on TCM, as we’re rounded-up to the minute here at The End:

Dave Cameron recaps a tremendous day for Mariner news with only a little hyperbole:

Let’s recap:

Morning: Ted Miller quotes USSM in the P-I, then jumps on the Adam Jones bandwagon.

Afternoon: Ichiro re-signs with the Mariners.

Evening: Ichiro goes 3-3 with the first inside-the-park HR in all-star game history. Wins All-Star game MVP award.

Late Evening: Jason Churchill reports that the team will give Adam Jones a starting job and bench Jose Vidro on Thursday.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the best single day this franchise has had since October 8, 1995. On the heels of Felix Hernandez mixing his pitches after reading our open letter, the Mariners winning 3 of 4 in Oakland while going 14 and 4 in their last 18 games, and Mike Hargrove resigning as manager, it feels like we’ve been granted access to our own personal genie.

Jim Emerson’s got a thread calling for Top 30 “favortiest” films over at his Scanners blog. Since, of course, I am constitutionally incapable of resisting lists, I figured I’d add mine to the pile:

1. Seven Samurai
2. Chungking Express
3. Casablanca
4. The Rules Of The Game
5. Touch Of Evil
6. Manhattan
7. Singin’ In The Rain
8. The Searchers
9. Pierrot Le Fou
10. The Big Lebowski
11. Millennium Mambo
12. Dr. Strangelove
13. Do The Right Thing
14. The Empire Strikes Back
15. Three Colors: Blue
16. Miller’s Crossing
17. A Woman Is A Woman
18. Once Upon A Time In The West
19. Playtime
20. 8 1/2
21. Au hasard Balthazar
22. Sunrise
23. House Of Flying Daggers
24. The New World
25. The Third Man
26. North By Northwest
27. Ugetsu
28. Hard-Boiled
29. Duck Soup
30. Black Narcissus

Like all such movie lists, this is totally subjective, largely random and can change from moment to moment. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, which is the whole point.