Best pre-2000 movies I watched on video (and at Emory) this year. As usual, there are lots.
1. City Girl (1930, FW Murnau)
2. Robin and Marian (1976, Richard Lester)
3. The Cranes are Flying (1957, Mikheil Kalatozishvili)
4. Lucky Star (1929, Frank Borzage)
5. The Band Wagon (1953, Vincente Minnelli)
Two silents in the top five – a first.
6. La Vie est un roman (1983, Alain Resnais)
7. The Blood (1989, Pedro Costa)
8. I Walked With a Zombie (1943, Jacques Tourneur)
9. Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)
10. The Last Movie (1971, Dennis Hopper)
Only two of the top ten were watched with Katy. She liked them both, though, and I imagine she’d love the silents and Robin and Marian.
11. Small Change (1976, Francois Truffaut)
12. The Ceremony (1995, Claude Chabrol)
13. Underworld U.S.A. (1961, Samuel Fuller)
14. Branded to Kill (1967, Seijun Suzuki)
15. Force of Evil (1948, Abraham Polonsky)
I’d seen two of these before, but no matter.
16. Johnny Guitar (1954, Nicholas Ray)
17. Jean Renoir’s Elena And Her Men (1956) and Petit Theatre (1970)
18. The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955, Luis Bunuel)
19. My Darling Clementine (1946, John Ford)
20. Aparajito (1957, Satyajit Ray)
Runners-up: The Saragossa Manuscript (I can’t tell if I would’ve liked this more or less had I not just read the novel), the first three Thin Man movies, Royal Wedding (advantage: Fred Astaire’s dancing, disadvantage: Jane Powell’s singing) and The White Sheik.