Sight & Sound has a new list of movies I should see.

This is not a full duplication of the Sight & Sound documentary lists.
It is a personal checklist.

Consensus Picks:

Man with a Movie Camera
Shoah
The Thin Blue Line
Salesman
Man of Aran
Belovy (Kossakovsky 1994)
Chronicle of a Summer
The Sorrow and the Pity
Darwin’s Nightmare
Nostalgia for the Light
Seasons (Pelechian 1975)
Welfare (Wiseman)
When We Were Kings
West of the Tracks
Listen to Britain
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
The Quince Tree Sun
Night Mail
A Diary for Timothy
Moi, un noir
Handsworth Songs (Akomfrah 1986)
Hour of the Furnaces
Waltz with Bashir

Individual Picks:

Quintin
Santiago (2007)
Informe general sobre unas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública (1976)
La Rosiere de Pessac (1968)

John Akomfrah
A Sixth Part of the World (1926)
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1977)
For Memory (1986)
Jaguar (1967)

Thom Andersen
In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914)
What Do Those Old Films Mean (1985)

Jennifer Baichwal
Volcano (1976)
Sud (1999)
Our Daily Bread (2005)
Picture of Light (1994)
Examined Life (2008)

Richard Brody
The Children Were Watching (1961)
Strange Victory (1948)

Noel Burch
Hotel des Invalides (1951)
King, Murray (1969)
Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed (1968)

Ian Christie
From the Pole to the Equator (1987)
Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1978)
Our Century (1983)

Mark Cousins
Minamata: The Victims and Their World (1972)
Last of the Unjust (2013)
Siddheshwari Devi (1989)
Letter From My Village (1976)
Sreda (1997)
November Days: Voices and Choices (1990)

Helen Dewitt
The Houses Are Full of Smoke (1987)

Su Friedrich
Basic Training (1971)
The Devil Never Sleeps (1994)

Jean-Michel Frodon
History of Post-war Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970)
I Wish I Knew (2010)
Route One/USA (1990)

Chris Fujiwara
Oriental Elegy (1998)
On the Bowery (1955)
The Shiranui Sea (1975)

Tag Gallagher
Acts of the Apostles (1968)
Cezanne (1989)
Valse brillante de Chopin (1936)
Toscanini (1944)

John Gianvito
Starting Place (1993)
How to Behave (1985)
The Journey (1987)
79 Primaveras (1969)
L’Algerie en Flammes (1958)

Joao Rui Guerra da Mata
Jaime (1973)
Berlin, Symphony of a City (1927)

Barbara Hammer
The Atomic Cafe (1982)
Tongues Untied (1989)

J. Hoberman
In the Street (1947)
Meet Marlon Brando (1965)

Ferroni Brigade
Misery in Borinage (1933)

Patrick Keiller
News From Home (1976)

Gabe Klinger
Seventeenth Parallel (1968)
Renoir, The Boss (1967)

Viktor Kossakovsky
Ten Minutes Older (1978)
Spiritual Voices (1996)
Workingman’s Death (2005)
Look at His Face (1966)
Our Mother is a Hero (1979)

Kevin Lee
Afrique 50 (1950)

Jorgen Leth
First Cousin Once Removed (2012)
Jogo de Cena (2007)

Scott MacDonald
Unsere Afrikareise (1961)
Time Indefinite (1993)
Microcosmos (1996)

Adrian Martin
Journey to the End of Night (1982)
The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez (2000)

Peter Matthews
Homework (1990)
Dying at Grace (2003)

Adam Nayman
The True Meaning of Pictures (2003)

Ben Rivers
Filmmaker’s Holiday (1974)
Horendi (1972)
Milestones (1975)

Jonathan Rosenbaum
La guerre d’un seul homme (1982)
Workers, Peasants (2001)
RR (2008)

Ben Russell
My Name is Oona (1971)
Crossroads (1976)
What the Water Said, No 1-3 (1997)
The Visitation (2002)
Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2009)

Michael Sicinski
Louisiana Story (1948)
Disorder (2009)
Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1988)
Granton Trawler (1934)

Amy Taubin
Las Muertas Chiquitas Una historia inacabada de placer y de violencia (2010)
S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)

James Toback
Hotel Terminus (1988)

1. The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-Wai)
2. Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
3. Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
4. Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie)
5. The World’s End (Edgar Wright)
6. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
7. Argo (Ben Affleck)
8. Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)
9. The Angels’ Share (Ken Loach)

Honorable Mentions for movies that made only minor impact but were totally fun at the time:
Frances Ha, The Great Gatsby, Machete Kills

Honorable Mentions for movies that were less fun but still good : Les Miserables, 12 Years a Slave, Neighbouring Sounds

Worst Sequel: Monsters University

Most Improved Franchise: Hunger Games

Best Opening Shot: Silent Light

Best Ron Perlman: Pacific Rim

1. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
2. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Alain Resnais)
3. Cloud Atlas (Tykwer & Wachowskis)
4. The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt)
5. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis)
6. Attenberg (Athina Tsangari)
7. Stoker (Park Chan-wook)
8. Dreileben trilogy (Graf, Petzold, Hochhausler)
9. Bestiaire (Denis Côté)
10. Alps (Giorgos Lanthimos)
11. The Oath (Laura Poitras)
12. Independencia (Raya Martin)
13. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)
14. Leviathan (Paravel & Castaing-Taylor)
15. Sightseers (Ben Wheatley)

From the past few years, either missed in theaters or never opened here.

1. The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
2. Women in Love (Ken Russell)
3. Genealogies of a Crime (Raoul Ruiz)
4. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
5. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi)
6. Passing Through (Larry Clark)
7. The Blind Owl (Raoul Ruiz)
8. Edge of the World (Michael Powell)
9. Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)
10. Hobson’s Choice (David Lean)
11. Damnation (Bela Tarr)

I don’t feel very strongly about the ordering. There’s always a Rivette, a Resnais, a Russell, a Ruiz on this list – my four trusty R’s. This year you can have a Roeg and an extra Ruiz, as the Resnais I watched made the Recent list instead, and the Rivette makes the honorable mentions – and there are lots, so let’s just number out some more, in no particular order.

12. Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette)
13. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
14. Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini)
15. The Man Who Left His Will On Film (Nagisa Oshima)
16. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
17. The More The Merrier (George Stevens)
18. I’m No Angel (Wesley Ruggles)
19. The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang)

Bonus: five more I’ve seen before in the dark, pre-blog era, which I enjoyed again this year (in no order):

. White Dog (Samuel Fuller)
. Vagabond (Agnes Varda)
. Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)
. The Nun (Jacques Rivette)
. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)

1. Night Music (Stan Brakhage)
It’s a cheat since I’ve covered this movie on the blog before, one day in the old apartment when I watched an entire disc of Criterion’s Brakhage set. But this film is easily lost in a crowd, being only 30 seconds long (including credits). I rediscovered it in the blu-ray edition and have been watching it on my laptop before every feature, and between shorts, and while writing or web browsing, and any time I need to clear my brain or vision – always silent and full-screen. Hell, I watched it twice while writing this paragraph.

2. La Villa Santo-Sospir (Jean Cocteau)
3. Artificial Light (Hollis Frampton)
4. John & Faith Hubley shorts
5. Cabale des oursins (Luc Moullet)
6. Coming Attractions (Peter Tscherkassky)
7. The Cloud Door (Mani Kaul)
8. Douro, Faina Fluvial (Manoel de Oliveira)
9. I Know Where I’m Going (Ben Rivers)
10. Lullaby (Andrzej Zolotukhin)
11. Cantico das criaturas (Miguel Gomes)
12. Cindy: The Doll is Mine (Bertrand Bonello)

I tend to write posts covering ten shorts at a time, so some of the above links will lead to the same post.

Now with category names stolen from The Dissolve.

Essentials:
Upstream Color
Story of My Death
The Great Beauty
Under the Skin
Computer Chess
American Hustle
Nebraska

Auteur Obligations:
Before Midnight
Night Moves
Only Lovers Left Alive
Real
Closed Curtain
Side Effects
Stray Dogs
Bastards
Wolf of Wall Street
Her

Hollywood(ish):
Curse of Chucky
Hell Baby
Spring Breakers

Imported Goods:
A Field in England
Snowpiercer
A Touch of Sin
The Wind Rises
The Missing Picture
Drug War

Others:
Watermark
The Strange Little Cat
Vic+Flo Saw a Bear
R100
Hannah Arendt
A Fuller Life

1. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
2. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
3. This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi)
4. Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard)
5. Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore)
6. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
7. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
8. Keyhole (Guy Maddin)
9. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
10. Prometheus (Ridley Scott)

Honorable mentions go to Looper, God Bless America and Mission: Impossible 4

Late-breaking unranked addition: Tabu

Best 3D of the year: Pina (Wim Wenders)

1. The Flowers of St. Francis (1950, Roberto Rossellini)
Currently my favorite Italian movie.

2. Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983, Raoul Ruiz)
3. Two by Manoel de Oliveira: Inquietude (1998) and Non, or the Vainglory of Command (1990)
Ruiz and Oliveira continually outdo each other, depending whose films I’ve watched more recently.

4. Alain Resnais double-feature: Smoking/No Smoking (1993)
Or maybe it’s a single feature – either way.

5. World on a Wire (1973, Rainer Fassbinder)

6. Apocalpyse double-feature: Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols) and Last Night (1998, Don McKellar)
Both are haunting end-of-the-world movies, but Last Night is so much less depressing.

7. Dogtooth (2009, Giorgos Lanthimos)
8. Lisztomania (1975, Ken Russell)

9. Nights of Cabiria (1957, Federico Fellini)
10. Saga of Anatahan (1954, Josef von Sternberg)

11. World’s Greatest Dad (2009, Bobcat Goldthwait)
12. Nouvelle Vague (1990, Jean-Luc Godard)
Currently my favorite Godard movie ever – will see how that opinion holds up.

13. Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967, Nagisa Oshima)
14. Daisies (1966, Vera Chytilová)
15. The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)
I cringe to see this at the bottom of my own list since it’s so good, but it was a great year.

Also great: The Scarlet Empress, Symbol, Black Sun, Earth, Tiny Furniture, Super, Walkabout and Metropolitan.

1. Shanghai Express on 35mm at Emory
Lovely to see on the big screen, right at the peak of my home-video Sternberg obsession.

2. Craig Baldwin’s Living Cinema on Edgewood
My favorite filmmakers should come to town projecting crazy culture-jamming shorts more often.

3. Sherlock Jr. and Melies-related shorts at Emory
Hugo-inspired program with live music, including a singalong.

4. The Killing in HD at the Plaza

5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream on 35mm at Emory

6. Pixar double-feature of Wall-E and Up at Phipps
These were reissued to theaters in beautiful 2D, but they forgot to advertise so Katy and I are the only ones who went.

7. Beau Travail on 35mm at Emory
Of course the White Material screening was more exciting for being introduced by Claire Denis herself, but I’d seen it before – Beau Travail was all new to me – exciting and gorgeous on the big screen, featuring a condescending post-film discussion.

8. Miyazaki double-feature at the Belcourt
A weekday afternoon in Nashville watching Disney-dubbed Japanese movies in a theater sparesely filled with children and childlike adults.