Here’s how it works: A film’s year is simply the year IMDB says it is. Not because IMDB is especially accurate, but just because it happens to be the easiest and most comprehensive resource there is for tracking film dates throughout the world and over the whole history of cinema. Occasionally IMDB will change a year as new information comes to light, when I notice such changes, I’ll change the list here accordingly.

This is Part Two, 1950-1975.

1950:

1. All About Eve
2. Wagon Master
3. Rashomon
4. In a Lonely Place
5. Gun Crazy
6. Stromboli
7. Sunset Blvd.
8. Winchester ’73
9. Harvey
10. Devil’s Doorway
11. The Furies

20. DOA
21. No Man of Her Own
22. The Breaking Point
23. Where Danger Lives
24. The Baron of Arizona
25. September Affair
26. Summer Stock
27. The File on Thelma Jordan
28. Born to be Bad
29. Cinderella
30. Annie Get Your Gun

1951:

1. Early Summer
2. An American in Paris
3. Awaara
4. The Steel Helmet

7. The Thing from Another World
8. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
9. Diary of a Country Priest

18. The Tales of Hoffman
19. His Kind of Woman
20. Fixed Bayonets!
21. The Tall Target
22. Anne of the Indies
23. Along the Great Divide
24. The Day the Earth Stood Still
25. Ace in the Hole
26. The Mating Season
27. A Streetcar Named Desire
28. Miss Julie
29. Royal Wedding
30. A Place in the Sun
31. Summer Interlude
32. Father’s Little Dividend
33. The House on Telegraph Hill
34. Show Boat
35. Mask of the Avenger
36. The Man from Planet X

1952:

1. Singin’ in the Rain
2. The Quiet Man
3. Ikiru
4. Bend of the River
5. Park Row
6. Limelight
7. On Dangerous Ground
8. Europa ’51
9. Ruby Gentry
10. Othello
11. The Lusty Men
12. Rancho Notorious
13. Monkey Business
14. Mother
15. The Bad and the Beautiful
16. Clash by Night
17. The Narrow Margin
18. The Life of Oharu
19. The Big Sky
20. Angel Face
21. Macao
22. The Crimson Pirate
23. Springfield Rifle
24. Blackbeard, the Pirate

30. High Noon
31. The Greatest Show on Earth
32. Million Dollar Mermaid
33. Pat and Mike
34. Ivanhoe

1953:

1. The Band Wagon
2. Ugetsu
3. M. Hulot’s Holiday
4. Duck Amuck
5. The Sun Shines Bright
6. Tokyo Story
7. Kiss Me Kate
8. Madame de. . .
9. The Big Heat
10. The Naked Spur
11. Give a Girl a Break
12. Mogambo
13. Pickup on South Street
14. The Saga of Anatahan

17. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
18. Wife
19. The Actress
20. I Love Melvin
21. The Moon is Blue
22. The Wages of Fear
23. Roman Holiday
24. The Blue Gardenia
25. Shane
26. I Confess
27. How to Marry a Millionaire
28. The Wild One
29. The Long, Long, Trailer
30. The Bigamist
31. The Tell-Tale Heart
32. Young Bess
33. From Here to Eternity
34. Never Let Me Go
35. Julius Caesar
36. Plunder of the Sun
37. Niagara
38. Peter Pan
39. Glen or Glenda

1954:

1. Seven Samurai
2. Rear Window
3. Voyage in Italy
4. Johnny Guitar
5. French Cancan
6. Sansho the Bailiff
7. Brigadoon
8. The Sound of the Mountain
9. On the Waterfront
10. A Star is Born

13. Magnificent Obsession

16. It Should Happen to You
17. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
18. Track of the Cat
19. Vera Cruz
20. Sabrina

24. Susan Slept Here
25. Chikamatsu monogatari
26. Executive Suite
27. Creature from the Black Lagoon
28. Them!
29. Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
30. The Caine Mutiny
31. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
32. Dragnet

1955:

1. Night of the Hunter
2. All That Heaven Allows
3. Pather Panchali
4. Kiss Me Deadly
5. Mr. Arkadin
6. Rebel Without a Cause
7. Ordet
8. Lola Montes
9. The Phenix City Story
10. Bad Day at Black Rock

28. Yang Kwei-fei
29. Killer’s Kiss
30. Land of the Pharaohs
31. Run for Cover
32. Lady and the Tramp
33. Smiles of a Summer Night
34. East of Eden
35. Kismet
36. The Blackboard Jungle
37. Tight Spot
38. Mr. Roberts
39. Daddy Long Legs
40. Marty
41. Samurai II: Duel at Ichioji Temple
42. 5 Against the House
43. Love Me or Leave Me
44. The Quatermass Xperiment
45. Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
46. The Big Knife
47. Record of a Living Being

49. The Last Frontier
50. Oklahoma!
51. Bride of the Monster
52. The Far Horizons

1956:

1. The Searchers
2. Tea and Sympathy
3. There’s Always Tomorrow
4. Written on the Wind
5. Flowing
6. Seven Men from Now
7. Toute la mémoire du monde
8. Aparajito
9. The Killing
10. On the Bowery
11. The Man Who Knew Too Much

14. Early Spring
15. The Girl Can’t Help It
16. Elena et les hommes
17. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
18. Bob le flambeur
19. While the City Sleeps
20. Street of Shame
21. The Ten Commandments
22. Forbidden Planet
23. The Red Balloon
24. War and Peace
25. Lust for Life
26. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
27. Great Day in the Morning
28. Giant
29. The King and I
30. Around the World in 80 Days
31. High Society
32. The Wrong Man
33. The Killer is Loose
34. Hot Blood
35. Moby Dick
36. Baby Doll

1957:
1957 Awards:

1. Funny Face
2. Throne of Blood
3. What’s Opera, Doc?
4. The Seventh Seal
5. Pyaasa
6. Cranes are Flying
7. Bitter Victory
8. Run of the Arrow
9. Tokyo Twilight
10. The Incredible Shrinking Man
11. The Tall T
12. The Tarnished Angels
13. A Chairy Tale
14. Witness for the Prosecution
15. Nights of Cabiria
16. The Sweet Smell of Success
17. Show Biz Bugs
18. Decision at Sundown
19. Jet Pilot
20. Steal Wool
21. Curse of the Demon
22. Le notti bianche
23. Ali Baba Bunny
24. China Gate
25. Men in War
26. Kanal
27. The Lower Depths
28. An Affair to Remember
29. Forty Guns
30. The Three Little Bops
31. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
32. Band of Angels
33. 3:10 to Yuma
34. Nightfall
35. Saint Joan
36. Ill Met By Moonlight
37. Il Grido
38. I am Waiting
39. Wild Strawberries
40. The Truth About Mother Goose
41. The Curse of Frankenstein
42. Paths of Glory

45. Bridge on the River Kwai
46. Go Fly a Kit
47. The Tin Star
48. Fire Down Below
49. The Rising of the Moon
50. Love in the Afternoon
51. Let’s All Go to the Lobby
52. The Edge of the City
53. Les Girls
54. The Enemy Below
55. Time Without Pity
56. Night Passage
57. The Wings of Eagles
58. Les Mistons
59. Peyton Place
60. 12 Angry Men
61. The Brothers Rico
62. The Pajama Game
63. Until They Sail
64. Ducking the Devil
65. A Face in the Crowd
66. NY, NY
67. Birds Anonymous
68. Designing Woman
69. Jailhouse Rock
70. The Three Faces of Eve
71. Tom’s Photo Finish
72. Zero Hour!
73. Pal Joey
74. The Man of 1000 Faces
75. 20 Million Miles to Earth
76.  Sayonara
77. The Buster Keaton Story
78. The Comedian
79. Old Yeller

1958:

1. Vertigo
2. Touch of Evil
3. Some Came Running
4. Murder by Contract
5. Mon Oncle
6. The Music Room
7. Ivan the Terrible Part 2
8. The Hidden Fortress
9. The Lineup
10. Bonjour tristesse
11. Man of the West
12. The Wind Across the Everglades
13. Elevator to the Gallows
14. A Night to Remember
15. A Time to Love and a Time to Die
16. Gigi
17. Equinox Flower

19. Party Girl

26. The Reluctant Debutante
27. The Left-Handed Gun
28. Two-Headed Spy
29. Indiscreet
30. The Vikings
31. Thunder Road
32. Separate Tables

1959:

1. North by Northwest
2. Rio Bravo
3. Hiroshima mon amour
4. Anatomy of a Murder
5. Sleeping Beauty
6. The 400 Blows
7. Ride Lonesome
8. The World of Apu
9. Pickpocket
10. Floating Weeds
11. Some Like It Hot
12. The Indian Epic
13. Imitation of Life
14. Jazz on a Summer’s Day

19. Our Man in Havana
20. Darby O’Gill and the Little People
21. City of Fear
22. Never So Few
23. Pillow Talk
24. The House on Haunted Hill
25. The Diary of Anne Frank
26. Ben-Hur
27. Plan 9 from Outer Space
28. The Shaggy Dog

1960:

1. Psycho
2. L’Avventura
3. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
4. Shoot the Piano Player
5. The Savage Innocents
6. Breathless
7. Sergeant Rutledge
8. The Bellboy
9. Les bonnes femmes
10. The Enchanting Shadow
11. The Apartment
12. Late Autumn
13. Peeping Tom
14. The Bad Sleep Well
15. Spartacus
16. La Dolce Vita
17. The Grass is Greener
18. Comanche Station
19. Ocean’s Eleven
20. Bells are Ringing
21. Eyes Without a Face
22. Tunes of Glory
23. Cimarron
24. 13 Ghosts
25. Once More with Feeling
26. Exodus
27. Inherit the Wind
28. The Magnificent Seven
29. The Time Machine
30. The Rat Race
31. House of Usher
32. The Alamo
33. Swiss Family Robinson
34. The Amazing Transparent Man
35. Pollyanna

1961:

1. A Woman is a Woman
2. Lola
3. Last Year at Marienbad
4. Yojimbo
5. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
6. Two Rode Together
7. Viridiana
8. West Side Story
9. One, Two, Three
10. The End of Summer
11. Blast of Silence
12. The Innocents
13. Mother Joan of the Angels
14. Underworld, USA
15. The Pit and the Pendulum
16. La Notte

20. The Guns of Navarone
21. Mysterious Island
22. The Absent-Minded Professor
23. The Parent Trap
24. 101 Dalmatians
25. The Colossus of Rhodes

1962:

1. An Autumn Afternoon
2. L’Eclisse
3. Window Water Baby Moving
4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
5. The Manchurian Candidate
6. Lawrence of Arabia
7. Hatari!
8. Cleo from 5 To 7
9. The Exterminating Angel
10. La jetée
11. Sanjuro
12. Harakiri
13. Advise and Consent
14. Le Doulos
15. My Life to Live
16. Two Weeks in Another Town
17. Hell is for Heroes
18. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
19. Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc
20. The Longest Day
21. Mamma Roma
22. The Trial
23. Ride the High Country
24. The Miracle Worker
25. Carnival of Souls
26. The Tale of Zatoichi
27. Jules and Jim
28. Lolita
29. Antoine and Colette
30. Tower of London
31. To Kill a Mockingbird
32. Mutiny on the Bounty
33. Days of Wine and Roses
34. Dr. No

1963:

1. The Birds
2. Charade
3. Contempt
4. 8 1/2
5. The Leopard
6. High and Low
7. The Love Eterne
8. Donovan’s Reef
9. The Nutty Professor
10. Shock Corridor
11. Bye Bye Birdie
12. The Great Escape
13. Muriel
14. Jason and the Argonauts
15. The Bakery Girl of Monceau
16. Mothlight
17. From Russia with Love
18. Tom Jones
19. Les Carabiniers
20. Le Petit soldat
21. Suzanne’s Career
22. The Haunting
23. Hud
24. X: the Man with X-Ray Eyes
25. 55 Days at Peking
26. Cleopatra
27. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
28. The Incredible Journey
29. The Terror

1964:

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. I am Cuba
4. Zulu
5. Yearning
6. My Fair Lady
7. Marnie
8. Mahanagar
9. Culloden
10. Charulata
11. The Train
12. Masque of the Red Death
13. Man’s Favorite Sport?
14. Gertrud
15. The Naked Kiss
16. A Hard Day’s Night
17. Goldfinger
18. Band of Outsiders
19. Woman in the Dunes

22. A Married Woman
23. Cheyenne Autumn
24. Viva Las Vegas
25. The World of Henry Orient
26. The Story of Sue San
27. The Tomb of Ligeia
28. Onibaba
29. A Fistful of Dollars
30. A Shot in the Dark
31. The Fall of the Roman Empire
32. Paris When it Sizzles
33. Becket
34. Robin and the 7 Hoods

1965:

1. Pierrot le fou
2. Chimes at Midnight
3. A Charlie Brown Christmas
4. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
5. Red Beard
6. Simon of the Desert
7. The War Game
8. For a Few Dollars More
9. The Naked Prey
10. Alphaville
11. Red Line 7000
12. Bunny Lake is Missing
13. Thunderball
14. Samurai Spy
15. Mudhoney
16. The Cincinnati Kid
17. Sons of the Good Earth
18. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
19. Major Dundee
20. Inside Daisy Clover
21. Sword of the Beast
22. Repulsion
23. Cat Ballou
24. Dr. Zhivago
25. The Heroes of Telemark
26. Shenandoah
27. Temple of the Red Lotus
28. The Hill
29. Darling
30. In Harm’s Way
31. The Sound of Music
32. That Darn Cat!

1966:

1. Au hasard Balthazar
2. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
3. Andrei Rublev
4. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
5. The Battle of Algiers
6. 7 Women
7. El Dorado
8. Blow-Up
9. Come Drink with Me
10. Masculin féminin
11. The Sword of Doom
12. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
13. Tokyo Drifter
14. What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
15. Torn Curtain
16. Made in USA
17. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
18. Closely Watched Trains
19. Hunger
20. Persona
21. Harper
22. Fahrenheit 451
23. The Glass-Bottom Boat
24. Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree
25. A Man for All Seasons
26. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
27. Grand Prix
28. The Trouble With Angels
29. Khaartoum

1967:

1. Playtime
2. The Young Girls of Rochefort
3. Dragon Gate Inn
4. The Red and The White
5. Don’t Look Back
6. Two for the Road
7. Point Blank
8. The One-Armed Swordsman
9. Wavelength
10. Week End
11. Le Samouraï
12. Bonnie and Clyde
13. Belle de jour

16. Scattered Clouds
17. The Graduate
18. You Only Live Twice
19. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
20. The Dirty Dozen
21. The Story of a Discharged Prisoner
22. La Chinoise
23. Eye Myth
24. Who’s that Knocking at My Door?
25. Cave of the Silken Web
26. Wait Until Dark
27. The Assassin
28. Cool Hand Luke
29. Barefoot in the Park
30. The Fearless Vampire Killers
31. Beach Red
32. In the Heat of the Night
33. Casino Royale
34. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
35. The Jungle Book

1968:

1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. The Lion in Winter
4. Rosemary’s Baby
5. Night of the Living Dead
6. Petulia
7. Golden Swallow
8. Hell in the Pacific
9. High School
10. The Color of Pomegranates
11. Stolen Kisses
12. Barbarella
13. Bullitt
14. The Immortal Story
15. Kill!
16. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
17. Planet of the Apes
18. Oliver!
19. The Odd Couple
20. Where Eagles Dare
21. The Producers
22. The Thomas Crown Affair
23. Ice Station Zebra
24. Romeo and Juliet
25. The Love Bug
26. No Way to Treat a Lady
27. Journey to Jerusalem

1969:

1. My Night at Maud’s
2. Age of Consent
3. Army of Shadows
4. Dead End
5. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
6. The Sorrow and the Pity
7. The Wild Bunch
8. Muhammed Ali: The Greatest
9. Z
10. Take the Money and Run
11. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
12. Return of the One-Armed Swordsman
13. Topaz
14. Have Sword Will Travel
15. True Grit
16. The Singing Thief
17. Midnight Cowboy
18. Easy Rider
19. Vengeance is a Golden Blade
20. Paint Your Wagon

1970:

1. Gimme Shelter
2. Claire’s Knee
3. Le cercle rouge
4. The Heroic Ones
5. Woodstock
6. The Conformist
7. Vengeance!
8. Patton
9. Brothers Five
10. The Wild Child
11. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
12. The Chinese Boxer
13. MASH
14. Catch-22
15. Dodes’ka-den
16. Five Easy Pieces
17. The Cheyenne Social Club
18. The Wandering Swordsman
19. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
20. The Boys in the Band
21. Rio Lobo

24. The Aristocats

1971:

1. A Touch of Zen
2. Two-Lane Blacktop
3. A New Leaf
4. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
5. The French Connection
6. Walkabout
7. The Last Movie
8. Two English Girls
9. Socrates
10. The American Dreamer
11. Dirty Harry
12. The Last Picture Show
13. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
14. A Clockwork Orange
15. Duel
16. Bananas
17. Harold and Maude
18. The Duel

21. Duel of Fists
22. The Big Boss
23. The Pursuit of Happiness

25. Diamonds are Forever
26. Get Carter
27. The Shadow Whip
28. Carnal Knowledge
29. The Sword
30. Bedknobs and Broomsticks

1972:

1. Cabaret
2. Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan
3. The Wold Shadow
4. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
5. Hapkido
6. The Godfather
7. The Heartbreak Kid
8. Solaris
9. Eat the Document
10. The Way of the Dragon
11. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
12. Tout va bien
13. The Boxer from Shantung
14. Play It Again, Sam
15. Fist of Fury
16. The Water Margin
17. Deliverance
18. Love in the Afternoon
19. What’s Up, Doc?
20. Frenzy
21. Cries and Whispers
22. Five Fingers of Death
23. The Cowboys
24. Sleuth
25. The 14 Amazons
26. Snoopy Come Home
27. The Man of La Mancha
28. Shaft’s Big Score

1973:

1. F for Fake
2. Mean Streets
3. Badlands
4. The Age of the Medici
5. The Long Goodbye
6. The Sting
7. The Fate of Lee Khan
8. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
9. Don’t Look Now
10. Sleeper
11. The Holy Mountain
12. Enter the Dragon
13. Emperor of the North
14. The Three Musketeers
15. Lady Snowblood
16. The House of 72 Tenants
17. American Graffiti
18. Spirit of the Beehive
19. Day for Night
20. Coffy
21. Paper Moon
22. The Paper Chase
23. Fantastic Planet
24. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
25. Blood Brothers
26. The Exorcist
27. High Plains Drifter
28. The Last Detail
29. Serpico
30. Live and Let Die

34. Save the Tiger
35. Shaft in Africa

1974:

1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. Chinatown
3. A Woman Under the Influence
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Gone in 60 Seconds
6. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
7. Dark Star
8. Phantom of the Paradise
9. Lancelot du lac
10. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
11. Cockfighter
12. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
13. That’s Entertainment!
14. The Four Musketeers

19. Five Shaolin Masters
20. The Stars are Beautiful

23. The Conversation
24. Thunderbolt & Lightfoot

26. Rabid Dogs
27. Hearts and Minds
28. Edvard Munch
29. The Longest Yard
30. The Sugarland Express
31. Games Gamblers Play
32. Busting
33. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
34. The Parallax View
35. Young Frankenstein
36. Murder on the Orient Express
37. The Front Page
38. Lenny
39. Herbie Rides Again
40. The Man with the Golden Gun

1975:

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2. Jaws
3. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
4. Barry Lyndon
5. Sholay

16. The Flying Guillotine
17. Dersu Uzala
18. All Men are Brothers
19. Shampoo
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
21. Dog Day Afternoon
22. The Dragon Tamers
23. The Wind and the Lion
24. The Rocky Horror Picture Show

It’s been a busy week, but it’s over for a few days. Now, back to the countdown. I’ve seen a lot of movies from this year, but not many I’d call great, and a lot of pretty bad ones.

27. Breathless
26. Krull
25. The Big Chill
24. Sudden Impact
23. The High Road To China
22. Never Say Never Again
21. Superman III
20. Never Cry Wolf
19. Mr. Mom
18. Octopussy
17. The Outsiders
16. The Hunger

15. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Watched it again a few years ago, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I remember. But, man, did it freak me out when I was a kid. I attribute my fear of spiders to this movie.

14. Terms Of Endearment – It’s a big epic cheeseball melodrama. But as those things go, it’s a pretty good one. Not even close to being the best movie about an astronaut in 1983, despite what Oscar may tell you. It’s basically Steel Magnolias without the accents.

13. Twilight Zone: The Movie – Not as good as the TV show, of course, but still a pretty fun movie. John Lithgow in the Shatner role as the guy who sees the gremlin on the airplane is the highlight.

12. Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life – More misses than hits, at times even boring. Some very good stuff, but not nearly as inspired as their earlier feature films, or the TV shows, or some of the other comedies of this year. Very disappointing.

11. Risky Business – I might have liked it more if I’d seen it as a kid, but I didn’t watch this until I was in college. Still, it’s not bad. Too many unintentionally bad 80s cliches to consider it a really good movie, but they do make it pretty fun to watch. Written and directed by Paul Brickman, who is three weeks younger than my mom.

10. Gorky Park – It’s been a decade or so since I’ve seen it, though I’ve seen it more than once. I remember it as a very solid crime drama. It doesn’t seem to have much of a following, but I guess that’s what happens to these kinds of movies over time. Stars William Hurt, Brian Dennehy, Lee Marvin, and, apparently, the Emperor himself, Ian McDiarmid. Directed by the hard-working Michael Apted.

9. King Of Comedy – It’s become a bit of a darkhorse candidate among Scorsese fans as one of his best movies, but I ain’t buying it. DeNiro does give a great performance as the unfunniest man in the world who really really wants to become a comedian, but the movie just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know if it’s too weird, or too misanthropic, or stars too much Sandra Bernhard. Not Scorsese’s worst movie.

8. Strange Brew – A Canadian comedy about beer, what’s not to love? Co-starring Max Von Sydow, who played chess with Death in The Seventh Seal. Much funnier than The Meaning Of Life.

7. Scarface – I know every pro athlete and rapper in the country loves this movie above all others. But honestly, I watched it once and I’m pretty sure I fell asleep in the middle. What I remember of it is alright. The hyperbole and scenery-chewing is intentional, but that doesn’t make it interesting. I recall it as a very ugly looking movie as well, and I don’t think that was intentional. I do admit that I need to watch it again.

6. WarGames – Another forgotten little classic from 1983. More than just a museum of ancient technology (check out that modem!), it’s actually a veery solid, entertaining thriller. Matthew Broderick stars as the computer “hacker” who mistakenly initiates global thermonuclear war. Ally Sheedy is the girl. Directed by John Badham, who did the classic Short Circuit and the very terrible Nick Of Time.

5. National Lampoon’s Vacation – The Griswold family goes to Wallyworld. Much like the next movie on this list, just because a series was run into the ground does not mean that we should forget the truly great films that began the series. The first two vacation movies are indisputable classics. Written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis.

4. Return Of The Jedi – The Ewoks are awful, annoying, and stupid. Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill give two of the worst performances in acting history. That said, this is still a great movie. Just about the only good thing that Lucas did with the special editions was changing the song at the end of this movie from that stupid chirpy Ewok song.

3. Zelig – Like Forrest Gump, if Forrest Gump hadn’t been made by someone as dumb as the main character is supposed to be. Woody Allen pioneered the ‘inserting the actor into old news footage’ technique that Zemekis used much less interestingly in Gump. Allen’s first movie with Mia farrow, after Diane Keaton left him to make Reds with Warren Beatty. Perhaps coincidentally, Zelig uses the same style of intercutting interviews with famous people that Beatty used in that movie. Like all of Allen’s best movie, it’s equally funny and serious. An underrated high point in his career.

2. Trading Places – One of the very few really good political comedies of the 1980s. Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, at their peaks, star as the victims of an unfortunate practical joke played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliot also star. Another John Landis classic.

1. The Right Stuff – In a bad year for serious dramas, this is far and away the best, and easily the best film of the year. It’s the story of the beginnings of the US space program, but it’s the intercutting of the story of Chuck Yeager (the best test pilot in the country at the time the program started (he’s the guy who broke the sound barrier), he decided he didn’t want to be an astronaut) that really gives the story some emotional depth. It’s not just a history of the space program, it’s a study of the kind of hyper-masculine craziness it takes to want to fly faster and higher than anyone ever has before. It’s a great looking movie, well directed by Phillip Kaufman (Henry & June, Quills, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being). The cast is outstanding, starring Sam Shepherd, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey, Levon Helm, Harry Shearer, Jeff Goldblum, Kathy Baker and Lance Henrikson. In a memorable performance as John Glenn’s wife Annie, is Mary Jo Deschanel, whose daughter Zooey played Trillian in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. One of my favorite movies, I can watch it over and over again, despite it’s, necessarily, epic length.

I’m sad to say I haven’t seen some key movies from 1983. In fact, I may get my film geek membership card revoked for admitting I haven’t seen one of them.

The Unseen:

Videodrome
Rumble Fish
The 4th Man
Tender Mercies
The Man With Two Brains
A Christmas Story
Yentl
All The Right Moves
Silkwood
Cujo
Flashdance
Local Hero

So, to jump right back in with 1982. It’s not a particularly great year at the top, but there’s some real good depth here.

21. Pink Floyd: The Wall
20. The Dark Crystal
19. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
18. First Blood
17. Tron
16. Rocky III

15. Diner – A key film for the Kevin Bacon game, as he costarred with Mickey Rourke Ellen Barkin, Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser and Tim Daly. I always found it a little forced and boring. Too much of an attempt to create a nostalgia movie.

14. The World According To Garp – A weird little movie based on a weird little book. Robin Williams is pretty good. So are John Lithgow and Glenn Close. Directed by George Roy Hill, who also did Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Sting and Funny Farm.

13. 48 Hrs. – Often credited with creating the black/white buddy cops genre, so we should all be thankful for that. This was back when Eddie Murphy was funny, so it’s pretty good. Nick Nolte’s great. Directed by Walter Hill, who also did The Warriors, Brewster’s Millions and Red Heat.

12. Tootsie – One of my picks for Most Overrated Movie Of All-Time. Its got one not especially funny joke (Hey Look! It’s Dustin Hoffman in a dress!! guffaw!), Jessica Lange is awful, and it’s really just boring. I’ve seen it a few times and have no idea what all the hubbub is about.

11. An Officer And A Gentleman – Richard Gere actually gives a pretty good performance. It’s hard to judge Lou Gossett Jr.’s, though, because he’s basically playing Generic Drill Sergeant Guy. It isn’t like he invented the character either: there’s a GDSG in Stripes just a year earlier. Was Sgt. Hulka the first GDSG? Director Taylor Hackford also directed Ray, Dolores Claiborne and The Devil’s Advocate.

10. Sophie’s Choice – Worth watching for the good performances by Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol, and, uh, that Streep woman is OK too. A pretty depressing movie, actually. Kline seems a little too over the top, but then he’s supposed to be, I guess. I don’t know, the whole Holocaust part of the story never really worked for me. But I’m not a big fan of depressing movies. I wonder if it worked better as a book. . .

9. Conan The Barbarian – A great looking, very violent movie. Probably would have worked better as a silent film, in fact. Though there is one great line. Max von Sydow and James Earl ones star, along with The Governor. Written and directed by John Milius, who wrote a version of Apocalypse Now, wrote and directed Red Dawn and is know working on the HBO series Rome.

8. Airplane II: The Sequel – More of the same. Not as good as the first one, of course, but very funny nonetheless. Written and directed by Ken Finklemen, the man responsible for Grease 2 and Who’s That Girl?

7. The Secret Of NIMH – One of my all-time favorite kids movies. Doesn’t have any of those dumb songs that the Disney movie does. The comic relief from Dom DeLouise is pretty bad, but everything else in the movie is outstanding. It’s dark for a kids movie, but has a terrific ending. I always liked the darker cartoon movies when i was a kid, didn’t everyone? Derek Jacobi plays the leader of the Rats, and Wil Wheaten and Shannon Doherty are two of the children.

6. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan – One of the few movies that’s able to be campy and legitimately good at the same time. KHAN! is silly, but Spock’s last scene is nonetheless, heartbreaking, I think this must be the best Shatner ever got. the special effects are great. It’s got Kirstie Alley, back when she was hot. That guy who played Shatner’s son, though, he’s terrible. Obviously the best Star Trek movie. It really isn’t close.

5. Fast Times At Ridgemont High – It gets bonus points for creating a genre. An amazing cast: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, and Ray Walston, with Eric Stoltz Anthony Edwards and Nicholas Cage on-screen briefly. Drags in the middle because the guys who play mark Ratner and Mike Damone, the two main characters through much of the film, are really not very good. All the scenes without them in it, especially Penn’s definitional performance as the stoner/surfer guy, are exceptional. Amy Heckerling went on to direct European Vacation, the Look Who’s Talking movies and Clueless. The screenplay’s by Cameron Crowe, based on his book.

4. Gandhi – I’m not a big fan of biopics in general, or of the ridiculous amount of praise that actors get for impersonating other famous people. But this is a very good biopic, and Ben Kingsley is very good as Gandhi. It leaves out pretty much all of Gandhi’s personal life, thank god, an focuses almost exclusively on the politics of India’s move toward independence, and then civil war over it’s eventual partition into India and Pakistan. Seeing this movie won’t do a damn thing for world peace, despite what director Richard Attenborough said at the time, but it is very good. Also appearing are John Gielgud, Martin Sheen, Candace Bergen Trevor Howard and John MIlls, but it’s really all about Ben Kingsley.

3. Blade Runner – Alright, I know I’ve said here, and elsewhere, that I hate Blade Runner, and I still do. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a very good movie. It’s an amazing looking film, one of the most visually stunning movies of the decade. It basically invented the sci-fi/noir film genre hybrid. Harrison Ford gives a great performance, along with Rutger Hauer. Sean Young and Darryl Hannah aren’t particularly annoying, as they tend to be. It’s an extremely well-made film, that unfortunately, happens to not make any sense whatsoever. Everything is fine up until the end, basically, when Ridley Scott decides he wants to be philosophical, then he simply turns into a babbling idiot. (Can’t really get too specific here, without giving anything away). I’ve seen Blade Runner a lot, at least three different versions of it. It never works. So here’s what I’m a-gonna do: I’ll add it to the Netflix queue and give it one more chance. I’ve said this many times before, and I’ve always been disappointed. But, what the hell, it’s still a great looking movie.

2. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – Speaking of great looking movies, this might be Spielberg’s most visually impressive film. It’s a very simple, sentimental story, a pretty thin exploitation of all those kids with divorced parents, in fact (absent parents are a major theme in Spielberg’s filmography). But the look and style of the film, and the terrific performance by Henry Thomas, that makes it a classic. I loved this movie when I was a kid, I can’t imagine any human child not liking it. I watched it for the first time since I was young a few years ago, and loved it just as much, though with more of an appreciation of the simple prettiness of the images.

1. The Verdict – Tough call among the Top 3 this year, as any one of these movies has a legitimate case to be #1, but The verdict never seems to get any press, and it really is a great movie. Paul Newman is outstanding as a broken down drunk of a lawyer who sues a Catholic Hospital for negligence after the death of a patient. There’s a lot of movies about people looking to redeem themselves by winning that one case, or saving that one patient, or winning that one big game, but this is one of the really good ones. Once again, I find I’m constrained by the fact that I know how it ends. . . suffice it to say that you should see it if you haven’t. Also stars Charlotte Rampling, who isn’t in a lot of movies, but is great in the ones I’ve seen (this and Stardust Memories, Jack Warden, Milo O’Shea, Lindsay Crouse, and James Mason (Julius Caesar, Lolita, North By Northwest). Directed by Sidney Lumet, one of the great underrated directors of all-time (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, Night Falls On Manhattan, 12 Angry Men, Long Day’s Journey Into Night).

And The Unseen:

Fitzcarraldo
Missing
Night Shift
The Thing
Poltergeist
Personal Best
Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
The Return Of Martin Guerre
The Man From Snowy River
The Year Of Living Dangerously
Victor/Victoria
Annie
Fanny And Alexander
Porky’s
The Toy
My Favorite Year
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy

So I was talking about Bach to someone who actually knows about this kind of music at work, and he told me that the Yo-Yo Ma album I’ve got is “infantile”. Not knowing what he meant by that, I questioned him for awhile, but he couldn’t really explain it such that I could understand it, seeing as how he understands the vocabulary of classical music criticism, and I don’t. He did say that his teacher would hate Ma’s version of the Cello Suites, that Ma was really bad at interpreting other people’s works, but that he liked the stuff he’s composed for himself. He mentioned that child prodigies, which I assume Ma was, are often really good technically but had trouble going beyond that (meaning, I assume, that they lack “soul”). He recommended I check out Pablo Casals’s version of the Cello Suites instead.

So I got the Casals version tonight, and it’s very apparent how different they are. The Ma version is very smooth and polished, very serene, very pretty. The Casals is rough, notes seem to jump in and out all over the place. The hard accents make the songs seem very jumpy and chaotic wherein the Ma versions smooth over most of that and you get a very mellow tune. This extends to the recordings as well. The Casals was recorded in the 30s, so obviously the sound is going to be rougher, you can even hear a hiss in the background throughout the album.

Is this enough to make Ma “infantile”? I wouldn’t think so. Not unless you think mellow is infantile, which i suppose some people could. But that seems more like a political opinion than a useful bit of music criticism. So I guess I’ll just assume I’m missing something.

Been real busy with my fast-paced and exciting life here. Still seething from the New Orleans debacle, and even more, from the apparent willingness of so many people to ignore the obvious about the federal government’s reaction to it. argh.

Been listening to more Bach. The Brandenburg Concertos, Toccata and Fugue and now the St. Matthew Passion. It took forever to pick a version of the Passion to buy. I finally settled on the (old, loud) Otto Klemperer one over the (modern, period authentic instruments) John Eliot Gardiner. I’ve already got a Klemperer version of Beethoven’s Eroica that I like. Apparently he’s wacky and crazy as far as classical conductors go, not that I can tell the difference or anything. I dig it so far.

In movie news, I still haven’t been able to see The Constant Gardner or The 40 Year Old Virgin, though both have gotten great reviews. I’ve been reading John LeCarré novels off and on for the last couple of years. But I’ve been going in order so I haven’t gotten to this one yet, nor am I likely to anytime in the foreseeable future. So I guess I’m just going to have to watch the movie first. Ah well. It’s by the director of City of God, which I loved (like everyone else who’s seen it, apparently).

Looks like lots of good movies are starting to finally come out. Scorsese’s Dylan documentary played the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews. The Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk The Line looks real good. Ang Lee’s made a movie about gay cowboys. Atom Egoyan’s got a new movie that failed to get an R rating. Polanski’s done Oliver Twist. David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence is supposed to be his best movie, and from the trailer, looks really good. Spielberg’s got a movie on the terrorism at the Munich Olympics (lends credibility to the “War of the Worlds as 9/11 allegory” theory, I think), a feature length Wallace and Grommit movie. Peter Jackson’s remade) King Kong (surprisingly the trailer looked really cool, not a Lange in sight). New movies from Curtis Hanson and Cameron Crowe. And, finally, the one I’m most excited to see, a new Terrence Malick movie, The New World, about Pocahontas, John Smith and Jamestown. The trailer looks amazing.

I have managed to watch a couple of David Mamet movies:

Oleanna is an old one, based on one of his earliest plays. William H. Macy plays a professor who doesn’t really do anything wrong, but gets royally screwed over anyway by a truly evil and insidious character: a militantly politically-correct moron. Amazingly prescient, it’s still worth seeing and arguing about. He does not, unfortunately, have this awesome mustache.

Spartan is a run of the mill spy movie with Val Kilmer playing, essentially, Jack Bauer. Only without the whole clock-ticking thing. It’s entertaining enough, very well-done and professional, but there isn’t really anything interesting here. William H. Macy is also in this movie, also without this awesome mustache.

In TV news, we watched the first episode of Rome, the new HBO series, but haven’t gotten around to the second one yet. It’s gotta be better than the dreadful Empire that ABC spat out earlier this summer. The second season of Entourage just ended. It wasn’t as good as the first season, but still a terrific show. All the cool kids are watching it, doncha know? Oh, and the season premiere of the OC was tonight. Maybe I’ll get to watch it sometime this weekend. . . .

Anyway, that’s it for the update. I’m gonna get back to the Movies Of The Year lists fairly soon. I know there are countless clamoring masses waiting to see just where Blade Runner ends up. . .

1981 isn’t quite as good at the top as some of the previous years, but is the deepest year so far, as I’ve seen a whopping 25 movies from this year. But since I’m trying to keep these at a reasonable length, I’m only going to write about the top 15.

So here’s 16-25:

25. For Your Eyes Only
24. Polyester
23. Dragonslayer
22. My Dinner With Andre
21. The Fox And The Hound
20. Chariots Of Fire
19. Taps
18. Victory
17, Neighbors
16. Escape From New York

15. Body Heat – I like Lawrence Kasdan, and I love film noir, but I’m not a big fan of this movie. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen so many real noirs before seeing this, I’d feel differently. But too late for that now. That’s the problem with making a classical genre film 25 years after the genre played itself out: it’s all been done before. There are some things to like: it looks great and Kathleen Turner and William Hurt are good. But in the end, it’s a mildly interesting nostalgia piece. There’s just nothing new here. Rated so high on technical merit alone.

14. On Golden Pond – It’s a silly melodrama about getting old and being estranged from your kids and grandkids. It’s not especially interesting to look at. It’s not particularly well-written. But Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn are terrific. It’s worth watching just to seem them for the last time.

13. Clash Of The Titans – This would be a great movie but for Harry Hamlin. He’s just plain awful. Ray Harryhausen’s masterpiece, watch it if you’ve forgotten what special effects were like before computers. Features Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Burgess Meredith, Sian Phillips and. . . Ursula Andress.

12. Gallipoli – I was a Mel Gibson fan before he spent the last year offending me as much as any filmmaker ever has. He still was in a lot of great movies though, and this was the first. He’s more of a supporting actor here. This is an excellent war movie about the disastrous, British led Australian attack on the Turks. It’s also the best film about runners from 1981, much superior to the deadly slow Oscar-winner Chariots Of Fire. The Pogues song “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” references the same historical events as this film. Peter Weir’s one of the great underrated directors of our time; he consistently makes above-average to great movies.

11. An American Werewolf In London – Not scary at all. Not hilariously funny. But in it’s own way, it’s a perfect weird little horror-comedy. Avoid the remake at all costs, even though it has Julie Delpy in it. The score is the funniest thing about the movie. Life mocks me, even in death.

10. Blow Out – If Carrie isn’t Brain DePalma’s best movie, then this is. Essentially a dumber version of Coppola’s The Conversation, John Travolta plays a much less interesting audio-tech guy than Gene Hackman did in that other movie. Whereas Coppola’s film is about the weird little man and how what he overhears drives him over the edge, DePalma just goes for the basic thriller-type movie. Effective and entertaining, but a lot less interesting.

9. Pennies From Heaven – Perhaps the most depressing musical of all time. Stars Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, though they lip-sync all the songs. Beautifully unrealistic sets, like what Scorsese did in New York New York only more obviously fake. Christopher Walken also stars, and dances. Directed by Herbert Ross, who also did Play It Again, Sam, Steel Magnolias and Footloose.

8. The Evil Dead – Not as good as it’s sequels, but tremendously important. Weird, hilarious, and oh so cheap. One of the pioneers of independent film. I don’t quite get the Bruce Campbell worship I encounter fairly regularly. Joel Coen was the assistant film editor.

7. Excalibur – Odd, uneven, King Arthur movie by John Boorman, the director of Deliverance and the great Point Blank. Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne all play supporting roles. Arthur is played by the guy who played Prince John in The Lion In Winter (hey, he was also in Troy and The Devil’s Advocate). There’s never been a truly great Arthur movie, as far as I’ve seen. This is about as good as it gets.

6. Time Bandits – The perfect kid movie if your kid happens to be a huge geek. That was me and I loved it. Still do, in fact. Little kid kidnapped by dwarves and hurtled through history? What’s not to love? An amazing cast: Sean Connery, John Cleese, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Shelly Duvall, Katherine Helmond, David Warner and Kenny Baker. One of my all-time favorite lines: the kid asks God why there is evil. God says “I think it has something to do with Free Will. . .”

5. Stripes – The only truly classic comedy of 1981, as the SNL and Second City guys started to run out of energy and die off. But Ramis and Murray are still going strong. I don’t know if Bill Murray ever made a movie quite this anarchic and subversive again. It exists solely to make fun of the establishment and its military. Of my 20 favorite comedies of all-time, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them were made between Animal House in ’78 and Ghostbusters in ’84. This would definitely be one of them. I want to party with you, cowboy.

4. Reds – Ah, why so high a rating for such a flawed movie? I don’t know, frankly. It’s such a great looking movie, about such interesting people, with such a great cast (Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson). I think a better movie could be made out of Jack Reed’s book. I’ve read half of it and it is truly amazing to read a day-by-day, you-are-there account of the Bolshevik Revolution. These were such interesting people, if Beatty had just resisted the temptation to make it into a conventional Hollywood Love Triangle Movie, this could have been a classic. As it is, it’s just very good.

3. The Road Warrior – The second Mel Gibson movie on this list. Don’t let the horrendous Beyond Thunderdome bias you against this legitimately great action movie. A post-apocalyptic Spaghetti Western, with very real Kurosawa influences. A near-perfect genre film, there wouldn’t be anything like it until John Woo’s great Hong Kong movies 15 years later. George Miller went on to direct Lorenzo’s Oil and Babe: Pig In The City.

2. Das Boot – Another great action movie, though it has hardly any “action”. Certainly the best submarine movie ever, and in the running for best war movie. Certainly no other film so effectively conveys as palpable a sense of the claustrophobia of submarine life. I’ve only seen the Director’s Cut version that came out 10 years ago or so. I hear there’s an even longer version that aired as a miniseries on German television. I’d love to see that. Wolfgang Peterson, after going Hollywood, is still one of the top high-quality action directors around. He did In The Line Of Fire, Outbreak, Troy, Air Force One, Enemy Mine and The Perfect Storm.

1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark – If you haven’t seen this movie, why are you reading this? I saw it dozens of times before I could do long division. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t like an Indiana Jones movie. I suspect it’s not really possible. My pick for the best Steven Spielberg movie ever. I’m trying real hard to think of a flaw in this movie. . . I guess Karen Allen’s a pretty mediocre actress. . . . That’s all I’ve got.

I didn’t do too badly covering this year, I’d be surprised if any of these Unseen Movies would make my top 15:

Heavy Metal
Thief
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Scanners
Arthur
History Of The World, Part 1
Diva
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Mommie Dearest
The Woman Next Door
American Pop

The 80s kick off with the best year yet.

15. American Gigolo – How did Paul Schrader go from Taxi Driver to this? What a freak. Richard Gere still isn’t awful, but he’s well on his way.

14. Breaker Morant – I’ve got to rate this movie this low because I don’t remember too much about it. It’s a Paths Of Glory-esque war movie set in Australia, starring Bryan Brown, from Cocktail, among others. I do recall thinking it was very good. I should see it again.

13. Flash Gordon – One of the few A sci-fi films to follow in the tradition of the great Barbarellla, only without all the sex. By the director of Croupier and the original Get Carter. I wonder if people understand that it’s camp is intentional. . . .how could it not be? Max Von Sydow, Tomothy Dalton and Brian Blessed are the famous people. The girl who plays Dale Arden went on to star in the TV series ‘Manimal’.

12. The Gods Must Be Crazy – One of those movies my family is obsessed with. Surprisingly, other people seem to like it too. It’s a very strange movie, I don’t know that there’s been any American film quite like it since World War II. Just a straight forward slapstick comedy, mixed with dry British humor. I could be wrong, but I think this is only only movie by a South African director I’ve ever seen.

11. Superman II – I’ve actually seen this more often than the fist one, and I always liked it better as a kid. But I haven’t seen either in years and years. Terrence Stamp gives an iconic performance as General Zod. Gene Hackman is still inexplicably in a Superman movie. The Fortress Of Solitude is awesome. Directed by Richard Lester, the guy who directed A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and the richard Chamberlin version of The Three Musketeers.

10. Stardust Memories – One of Woody Allen’s strangest films, it doesn’t quite work, but is still pretty interesting. It is to Fellini what Interiors was to Bergman, and it’s much more successful than that other film. A great performance by Charlotte Rampling.

9. Ordinary People – I feel bad rating this so low, but every film in the top 8 this year is a indisputable classic. Tremendous acting all around here, as Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore are all award worthy. It’s the first film Robert Redford directed, and he’d get a lot better at it as time went on. The direction here mainly serves to highlight the terrific performances. A profoundly depressing movie.

8. The Big Red One – Samuel Fuller’s autobiographical masterpiece follows five guys through the course of World War II, based on his own experiences there. It’s the movie Saving Private Ryan wants you to think it is. A really great war movie, dragged down by some poor non-Lee Marvin performances, notably the woefully inadequate Mark Hamill.

7. Kagemusha – Though it is largely overshadowed by and seen as merely a test-run for Ran, this is still a terrific movie. One of the most static films Kurosawa ever made, there are long stretches where the camera never moves. I wonder how influential these two films were on the Chinese films of the 90s. Seems to me Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are also notable for very composed, colorful, static shots. Tough to say, after all, it isn’t like Kurosawa invented this style, though he does it exceptionally well. Tatsuya Nakadai gives a terrific performance, though Toshiro Mifune probably would have been better. If you ever played Nobunaga’s Ambition on the Nintendo, this movie’s for you.

6. The Blues Brothers – Great music, great car chases, Carrie Fisher with many many guns, nuns, rednecks, Nazis, this movie has it all. John Belushi gives his best performance. Not only the best musical of the 80s, but the best car chase movie of all-time.

5. The Shining – The best haunted house movie ever made, maybe the best horror movie ever, period. Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall give wonderful, appropriately over-the-top performances, and Kubrick provides suitably over-the-top direction. Brilliantly weird and disturbing.

4. Caddyshack – One of the most quotable movies ever, 25 years later it’s still hilarious. Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield get all the best lines. The nobodies who played the caddies could have really dragged the movie down, as it is they’re unremarkable, which is great because it allows the comic geniuses (Dangerfield, Chase, Murray and the guys who wrote the script: Harold Ramis, Brian Doyle-Murray and Dougls Kenney) to be the real stars of the movie. And the gopher. the gopher’s alright too. In contention for greatest comedy ever.

3. Raging Bull – A great looking movie, but it’s never grabbed me the way it seemingly has so many others. Jake LaMotta just isn’t sympathetic enough for me to become very concerned with his downfall. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Scorsese expects us to feel sorry for him, it’s just that tragedies with wholly unsympathetic heroes aren’t particularly interesting. The Age Of Innocence has the same problem. It is also an amazing looking film that is nonetheless relentlessly dull. Perhaps I’m missing something. . . .Anyway, still the best boxing movie ever.

2. Airplane! – Wow, was 1980 a great year for comedies or what? Do not let the string of god awful early 90s parody movies prejudice you: the original is a nearly perfect comedy. A worthy inheritor of the Marx Brothers tradition of putting the jokes first, and the plot 512th or so. A relentless barrage of jokes, the film never slows down and remains consistently rewatchable as a result: every time you see it, you catch another joke you’d never noticed before. career altering performance by Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielson and Robert Stack are the acting highlights, along with a classic cameo by June Cleaver. My pick for the funniest movie of all-time.

1. The Empire Strikes Back – The Out Of The Past podcast for this week is on Blade Runner, and in the course of the conversation about noir influence in sci-fi, one of the profs mentions that one of the main reasons people think Empire is the best Star Wars film is because of the noirish dialogue Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett brought to the screenplay. Its a great point, I’d never though of it before, but it makes total sense. its not just the events of the film that make it seem so dark (though they are dark), it’s the script. Being called the best written Star Wars film is about like being the best utility infielder for the Kansas City Royals, but still, Empire is a tremendously well-written action movie. Added to that great screenplay is the very good direction by Irvin Kershner, every bit as good as Lucas’s in the first movie (which I think was very good as well). There’s a neat twist at the end, too, but I promise I won’t give anything away.

Some decent movies in the unseen list for this year, though I doubt any would finish above #9:

Heaven’s Gate
The Elephant Man
Friday The 13th
Gates Of Heaven
The Big Brawl
Melvin And Howard
Gloria
The Last Metro
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Atlantic City
Xanadu
The Final Countdown
Fame
Dressed To Kill
Somewhere In Time
Nine To Five
Popeye

Another great year in 1979.

10. Kramer Vs. Kramer – Divorce is bad. The kids are the real victims. Yeah yeah yeah. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep are great, as always.

9. The Black Stallion – I haven’t seen this since I was a kid, but I really loved it then. I don’t remember any of the dialogue, just sequences of amazing images and vibrant colors. I need to see it again to see if it’s as great looking as I remember.

8. Being There – A clever movie, but not as smart as people seem to think it is. Peter Sellers is great. It’s one joke gets a little tiresome after awhile.

7. The Great Train Robbery – Very energetic, entertaining Sean Connery film written and directed by Michael Crichton.

6. The China Syndrome – One of the great “social problem” films of all-time. Stars Jack Lemmon as a whistle-blower at a nuclear power plant. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas play the journalists to whom he blows the whistle. By the director of the Paper Chase.

5. The Jerk – Just as classic as Animal House, but it slows down too much in the second half and wasn’t nearly as influential. Still one of the funniest movies of all-time, the first half hour or so can’t be topped.

4. Alien – Ridley Scott’s best movie. Possibly the best horror movie of all-time. Great performance by Sigourney Weaver as one of the all-time great badass women. Enormously influential, yet it’s lost none of it’s effectiveness over time.

3. The Life Of Brian – My personal favorite of the Monty Python movies. It’s the combination of absurdist comedy and actual historical-political critique that makes it so much more resonant than The Holy Grail or Meaning Of Life. Unfortunately, it’s only become more relevant over the last 26 years. I’m not the Messiah, really I’m not!

2. Apocalypse Now – Wow, was this a tough call for #1. I really do love this movie, every bit of it. I know it doesn’t make any sense, and that Coppola had no real idea what he was doing, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. the chaos and bizarre primitive lunacy of this totally unrealistic film does a far better job of explaining Vietnam than any realistic treatment could hope to. it’s reality that’s screwed up, not the film. Someday, this war’s gonna end.

1. Manhattan – Has held the default position of My Favorite Movie for over a decade now. Not Best, Favorite. A important distinction, I guess. Just as funny as Annie Hall, but less fantastical. It’s a Woody Allen movie that scathingly critiques the type of people who watch, and the characters who appear in, Woody Allen movies. As depressing and critical as it is though, it still manages to have a totally effective and believable happy ending. The best looking of Allen’s films (it really isn’t close). Tremendous integration of an all-Gershwin score. Allen’s best acting, Diane Keaton is excellent as an anti-Annie Hall, Mariel Hemingway brings a lot of humanity to an essentially symbolic role. You have to have a little faith in people.

A lot of Unseen Movies from this year as well:

The Warriors
1941
Escape from Alcatraz
The Muppet Movie
Mad Max
Woyzeck
Zulu Dawn
North Dallas Forty
The Castle Of Cagliostro
Quadrophenia
Nosferatu The Vampyre
Meatballs
All That Jazz
The Tin Drum
. . .And Justice for All

The best year for movies yet is 1978. And the first time all of my top films are actually good.

13. Coming Home – I don’t generally like depressing movies, and this is a Depressing Movie. It’s redeemed by the great performances by Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern.

12. Interiors – Woody Allen follows up the best romantic comedy ever with. . .his most boring movie ever. Like Coming Home, this is Depressing, but there is also some terrific acting. But if you wanted to watch a Bergman movie, you should just watch a Bergman movie. Allen would get better at serious movies. This has the same relation to, say, Crimes And Misdemeanors as Hollywood Ending has to Sleeper.

11. Game Of Death – Bruce Lee only made half of this before he died, but they released it anyway, with a different actor pretending to be Lee through much of the movie. Really, you’re better off just skipping ahead to the climax, wherein the actual Lee has to fight his way up a tower (including a tremendous scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) to get to the bad guy.

10. The Five Deadly Venoms – A Shaw Brothers genre film, built around a fairly tedious mystery plot. Really picks up towards the end when the fighting starts.

9. Grease – A very strange film. I’ve only seen it once, unlike, apparently, everyone else. More interesting than funny. There’s some catchy songs, but I like dancing in my musicals and none of the sequences here stick in my memory.

8. Halloween – The best film of its genre, not counting Alien. But I’m not a real fan of the genre. It towers above its competition, really. Genuinely scary.

7. Dawn Of The Dead – Zombies invade a shopping mall: pure genius. The best of Romero’s Zombie Quartet and the one where his anti-capitalist metaphor works the best. Watch the long version.

6. Superman – What are Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman doing in this movie? A really great looking movie, made believable by the work of actors who should be above this sort of thing. After almost 20 years of post-Batman, post-modern superheroes, I’l admit a little nostalgia for a movie that plays the superhero thing totally straight.

5. The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin – Apparently the Shaw Brothers masterpiece, though I’ve only seen the two films on this list. A great epic martial arts film. Remember the funky logo at the beginning of Kill Bill Vol. 1? That’s the Shaw Brothers. Gordon Liu stars in this movie, and plays one role in each of the Kill Bill movies.

4. The Last Waltz – The Band’s last concert, chock full of guest appearances. My favorites are Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and, I guess just for the hell of it, Neil Diamond. The concert’s great, but it’s the way Scorsese cuts between the songs and the interviews to always keep the movie moving forward, that makes this one of the few great music documentaries.

3. The Deer Hunter – Quite the year for depressing movies. The scope and weight of this film is unmatched in Vietnam films. But it is so dark and depressing. The cast is truly amazing: DeNiro, Walken, Cazale, Savage and Streep are all outstanding. Two things keep this from being #1. First, I’ve never found what happens to Walken’s character to be realistic. Not just the going nuts and playing Russian Roulette part, but DeNiro going back and finding him and what happens then. . . .it’s just too much for me to believe in a film that seems so relentlessly realistic in every other aspect. Second is the relationship between Streep and DeNiro. I’m not sure exactly why, but it never worked for me. A great movie, the third best Vietnam movie ever, but not the best of 1978.

2. Days Of Heaven – Terrence Malik’s never failed to make a Great Movie. Of course, he’s only made three movies (the fourth is coming out this fall, oh yeah, I’m excited). This one stars Richard Gere (before he became a star, and therefore when he was good) and Brooke Adams as Depression Era wanderers who end up working on the always great Sam Shepard’s farm. Shepard falls in love with Adams and bad things start to happen in incredibly beautiful ways. One of the very best looking movies ever made.

1. Animal House – How can I put this #1 ahead of Serious Movies like The Deer Hunter and Interiors and Coming Home? Because it’s my list, dammit. And also because Animal House is a better, more innovative, more important movie than any of those others. Ask yourself honestly which you’d rather watch: John Belushi being fat, drunk and stupid, or Jon Voight as a paraplegic trying to steal Bruce Dern’s wife because Vietnam sucked? That’s what I thought. Animal House created a genre that has had way more than its share of crappy movies, but it also spawned some classics (Caddyhack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, etc). Interiors spawned, um, er, nothing. Just because it’s funny, doesn’t mean it isn’t respectable. And Animal House might be the funniest movie ever made.

Some pretty good movies I haven’t seen from this year, but I’d be surprised if any made my top 8:

Drunken Master
I Spit On Your Grave
La Cage Aux Folles
Foul Play
Heaven Can Wait
Up In Smoke
Midnight Express

I’m missing more from 1977 than 76, but I really doubt any of them would break into my top 5.

Here’s the list:

11. Saturday Night Fever – Yeah the dancing is kinda cool, but this is a truly terrible movie. Painfully bad.

10. Pete’s Dragon – The first of several kid’s movies this year. Mediocre live action, partly animated Disney movie. Mickey Rooney’s in it.

9. Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo – I loved the Herbie movies when I was a kid. This is a Herbie movie. Ignore the Lindsey Lohan version.

8. Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown – Never one of my favorite Peanuts films, but it’s alright.

7. The Rescuers – A lesser Disney cartoon, but it does star Bob Newhart. So that’s cool.

6. The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh – A much better Disney cartoon. One of the best, in fact. There’s a big gap between 6 and 7 here.

5. New York, New York – A great, underrated Scorsese movie, it’s a very dark musical with the unlikely cast of Robert DeNiro and Liza Minelli. Basically the same story as A Star Is Born, but elevated by some of Scorsese’s best looking scenes. The opening set-piece on VE day is amazing.

4. A Bridge Too Far – More than the epitome of the Caine-Hackman Theory, it’s a great war movie in it’s own right. Really the last great classical war movie. All-star cast (Caine, Hackman, Connery, Caan, Redford, Ryan O’Neal, Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Liv Ullman, maximillian Schell, Denholm Elliott, Elliott Gould, etc) epic scope, complex action sequences, interesting story, it’s got it all.

3. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind – Possibly Spielberg’s best movie. Great performance from Richard Dreyfuss. Chock full of visually stunning sequences. Francois Truffaut co-stars as a scientist. Classic That Guy Bob Balaban plays Truffaut’s assistant. This means something.

2. Star Wars – Very tough call between 1 and 2. Ask me ten minutes from now and I might reverse them. It’s fashionable to prefer Empire, but it’s Star Wars that is the truly revolutionary film. I refuse to blame it for the crap that came after it, or the effect it had on industry strategy (the creation of the blockbuster-event film).

1. Annie Hall – The best romantic comedy of all-time. Iconic performances by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. One of my 5 favorite movies ever. Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum have cameos. We need the eggs.

The Unseen:

That Obscure Object Of Desire
Eraserhead
Slap Shot
Smokey And TheBandit
The Kentucky Fried Movie
The Goodbye Girl
Oh, God!
Looking For Mr. Goodbar
Pumping Iron
Black Sunday
3 Women
Stroszek