1. Glas (1958, Bert Haanstra)
I thought this and Rotterdam Europoort were completely amazing, then I watched each again. This one became more amazing and Rotterdam less.

2. Very / Night Mulch (2001, Stan Brakhage)
You can’t beat Brakhage on the big screen.

3. Walker (2012, Tsai Ming-liang)
4. Partysaurus Rex (2012, Mark Walsh)
These were, respectively, the slowest and fastest shorts of the year.

5. Poetic Justice (1972, Hollis Frampton)
6. Lost Buildings (2004, Chris Ware & Ira Glass)

7. Ako (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
8. The Eraser (1977, Shuji Terayama)

9. Fantasmagorie (1908, Emile Cohl) and 78 Tours (1985, Georges Schwizgebel)
Two unrelated animations, lifetimes apart, featuring lots of things morphing into other things.

10. The Wholly Family (2011, Terry Gilliam)

Movies by directors I follow:

Amour (Michael Haneke)
Ashes (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Bernie (Richard Linklater)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)
John Dies at the End (Don Coscarelli)
Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie)
Lines of Wellington (Valeria Sarmiento)
La Noche de Enfrente (Raoul Ruiz)
On Death Row (Werner Herzog)
Outrage Beyond (Takeshi Kitano)
Passion (Brian De Palma)
Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
Twixt (Francis Ford Coppola)
You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet (Alain Resnais)

Other ones that look great:

The ABCs of Death (anthology)
Cloud Atlas (Wachowskis & Tom Tykwer)
The Dictator (Larry Charles)
Les Miserables (Tom Hooper)
ParaNorman (Chris Butler & Sam Fell)
Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
Sightseers (Ben Wheatley)

Critical faves:

Argo (Ben Affleck)
Barbara (Christian Petzold)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)
Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland)
Bestiaire (Denis Cote)
Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo)
Killer Joe (William Friedkin)
Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor & Paravel)
Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev)
Mud (Jeff Nichols)
Neighbouring Sounds (Kleber Mendonca Filho)
No (Pablo Larrain)
Rust & Bone (Jacques Audiard)
Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

Sight & Sound put out their big, big list of the best films ever, and everyone everywhere is talking about Vertigo. I love lists, but am more interested in the individual top tens than the consensus, seeking out the stray title which was ignored by everybody except for one person, who considers it one of the ten best films ever made. So I combed the website – so full of typos, mysteries (Scorsese got 12 picks?) and weird decisions (Manoel de Oliveira, best known for To Each His Own Cinema) – and made myself some must-see lists based on the critics, directors and consensus picks. I’m not making this into a big project-of-the-year and rushing to watch all of these, just making a note to cross ’em off the list if/when I ever get to them.

Unique films from the Directors’ top-ten lists that I haven’t seen:

Aaron Katz
US Go Home (Claire Denis)

Abel Ferrara
Hawks and Sparrows (Pasolini)
Cul-de-Sac (Polanski)
Prison (Bergman)

Agnieszka Holland
Diamonds of the Night (Nemec)
La Reine Margot (Patrice Chereau)

Aki Kaurismaki
Z (Costa-Gavras)

Andrew Kotting
Black Sun (Gary Tarn)
Moon and the Sledgehammer (Philip Trevelyan)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
La Captive (Akerman)
Rain/Regen (Ivens)

Ben Rivers
Fata Morgana (Herzog)
Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik)
Portrait of Ga (Margaret Tait)
Soft Fiction (Chick Strand)
Weather Diary 3 (Kuchar)

Ben Russell
Christmas on Earth (Barbara Rudin)
Crossroads (Bruce Conner)
Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto)
Heart of Glass (Herzog)
Jaguar (Rouch)

Bong Joon-ho
The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young)

Bruce Robinson
I’m Alright Jack (John Boulting)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward Cline)

Charles Burnett
Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak)
Shop on Main Street (Jan Kadar)
Student of Prague (Henrik Galeen)
Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermano Olmi)

Chris Petit
Eat the Document (Bob Dylan)
The Giant (Michael Klier)
White of the Eye (Donald Cammell)

Corneliu Porumboiu
Faits Divers (Depardon)

Edgar Wright
Dames (Busby Berkeley)

Eugene Green
The Jester (Jose Alvaro Morais)

Fernando Meirelles
Iracerna (Jorge Bodanzky/Orlando Senna)

Fred Kelemen
The Second Circle (Sokurov)

Gaston Kabore
The Thorn Birds (Lee Stanley)
Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Ettore Scola)

Gerardo Naranjo
Possession (Zulawski)
Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder)
Arrebato (Ivan Zulueta)

Gregg Araki
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch)

Guy Maddin
Man’s Castle (Borzage)
After Life (Kore-eda)

Gyorgy Palfi
Love (Karoly Makk)

Jiri Menzel
Fireman’s Ball (Forman)
A Dog’s Life (Chaplin)

Joe Swanberg
Dillinger Is Dead (Ferreri)
Two Lovers (Gray)

John Gianvito
The Age of the Earth (Glauber Rocha)
Kuhle Wampe (Brecht/Ottwald)
Reason, Debate and a Tale (Ghatak)
Shiranui Sea (Tsuchimoto Noriaki)
Story of Kindness (Tran Van Thuy)
West Indies (Med Hondo)

Hirokazu Kore-eda
Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)

Les Blank
Paris at Midnight (E. Mason Hopper)

Lisandro Alonso
Le Havre (Kaurismaki)

Lukas Moodysson
Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg)
A Swedish Love Story (Roy Andersson)

Mark Romanek
Heaven’s Gate (Cimino)

Michael Glawogger
Vivan las Antipodas! (Kossakovsky)
All My Life (Baillie)
How Yukong Moved the Mountains (Ivens)

Michael Mann
Confessions (Tetsuya)

Miguel Gomes
Francisca (Oliveira)

Mike Hodges
The Prowler (Losey)

Mike Leigh
How a Mosquito Operates (McCay)
The Emigrants (Jan Troell)

Miranda July
Blind (Frederick Wiseman)
Cheese (Mika Rottenberg)
Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra)
Somewhere in Time (Jeannot Szwarc)

Monte Hellman
Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed)
Storm Over Asia (Pudovkin)

Olivier Assayas
Ludwig (Visconti)
Van Gogh (Pialat)

Patricio Guzman
Boxing Gym (Wiseman)
Cien Ninos Esperando un Tren (Ignacio Aguero)
Etre et Avoir (Philibert)
Gruningers Fall (Richard Dindo)
Mother Dao (Vincent Monnikendam)
S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (Rithy Panh)

Patrick Keiller
Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Lumiere)

Peter Davis
Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon)

Peter Tscherkassky
Adebar (Kubelka)
At Land (Deren)
The Pig (Eustache/Barjol)
Easy Out (Pat O’Neill)

Peter von Bagh
A Man There Was (Sjostrom)

Quentin Tarantino
Pretty Maids All in a Row (Roger Vadim)
Rolling Thunder John Flynn)
Sorcerer (Friedkin)

Raya Martin
Manila by Night (Ishmael Bernal)
Eruption volcanique a la Martinique (Melies)

Robert Gardner
Freeze, Die, Come Alive (Vitali Kanevsky)
My Life as a Dog (Hallstrom)

Rolf de Heer
Fearless (Peter Weir)
The Stud Farm (Andras Kovacs)

Samantha Morton
The Browning Version (Asquith)
Ladybird Ladybird (Loach)

Sean Durkin
Panic in Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg)

Shinji Aoyama
Hail Mary (Godard)
Killer Elite (Peckinpah)

Sion Sono
Turks Fruit (Verhoeven)

Terence Davies
The Happiest Days of Your Life (Frank Launder)
Victim (Basil Dearden)
Young at Heart (Gordon Douglas)

Terry Jones
I’m No Angel (Wesley Ruggles)

Thom Andersen
God’s Stepchildren (Oscar Micheaux)

Ulrich Kohler
D’est (Akerman)

Ulrich Seidl
My Little Loves (Eustache)

Wanuri Kahiu
Space is the Place (John Coney)

William E Jones
Ten Minutes to Live (Oscar Micheaux)

Unique films from the Critics’ top-ten lists that I haven’t seen:

Craig Keller
23rd Psalm Branch (Brakhage)

Chris Fujiwara
Man’s Favourite Sport? (Hawks)

Amy Taubin
Cosmopolis (Cronenberg)

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Red Viburnum (Vasili Shukshin)

Girish Shambu
Dil Se (Mani Ratnam)

Gary Indiana
The Death of Maria Malibran (Schroeter)

Jaime Christley
Ministry of Fear (Lang)

James Naremore
Variety (Bette Gordon)

J Hoberman
The Girl From Chicago (Oscar Micheaux)
Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)

Jonathan Romney
Street of Crocodiles (Quay Brothers)
Three Crowns of the Sailor (Ruiz)

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Cuadecuc-Vampir (Portabella)

Kevin Lee
Under the Bridges (Helmut Kautner)

Laura Mulvey
La Signora di Tutti (Max Ophüls)

Mark Cousins
The Insect Woman (Imamura)

Mehrnaz Saeedvafa
The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis)

Michael Koller
Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán)

Mike D’Angelo
Exotica (Egoyan)

Nathan Lee
From the Notebook of (Robert Beavers)

Noel Burch
The Truth About Bebe Donge (Henri Decoin)

Noel Vera
Three Years Without God (Mario O’Hara)

Peter von Bagh
Angèle (Marcel Pagnol)

Quintin
La Libertad (Lisandro Alonso)

Richard Pena
Two Stage Sisters (Xie Jin)

Scott MacDonald
Unsere Afrikareise (Peter Kubelka)

Tag Gallagher
From the Clouds to the Resistance (Straub/Huillet)

Tony Rayns
Scenes from a City Life/Dushi Fengguang (Yuan Muzhi)

Vadim Rizov
The Wedding Suit (Kiarostami)

Eight critics with a bunch of offbeat titles each:

Adrian Martin
Anna (1972, Alberto Grifi/Massimo Sarchielli)
Behindert (1974, Stephen Dwoskin)
By the Bluest of Seas (1935, Boris Barnet/S. Mardanin)
The Departure (1966, Jerzy Skolimowski)
L’Enfant Secret (Philippe Garrel)
Nuit et jour (Chantal Akerman)

Alexander Horwath
I am Twenty (1963, Marlen Khutsiyev)
Line Describing a Cone (1973, Anthony McCall)
My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure (Robert Beavers)
Reisender Krieger (1981, Christian Schocher)
Schwechater (1958, Peter Kubelka)

Christoph Huber
Arcana (1972, Giulio Questi)
Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur)
The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher)
The Ducksters (Chuck Jones)
Fiamma che non si spegne (Vittorio Cottafavi)
Ng Long Pat Kua Khuan (Liu Chia-Liang)
On The Silver Globe (1988, Andrzej Zulawski)
The Party (Blake Edwards)

Fred Camper
Egyptian Series (Brakhage)
El Dorado (Hawks)
What Goes Up? (Breer)
Yearning (Naruse)

Gabe Klinger
1126 Dewey Avenue, Apt. 207 (creators unknown)
79 Springtimes (1969, Santiago Álvarez)
The Country Doctor (1909, D.W. Griffith)
Wagon Master (John Ford)

Ian Christie
The ‘?’ Motorist (1906, Robert Paul)
A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings)
Rainbow Dance (Len Lye)
The Sun (Sokurov)

Mark Webber
Eniaios (Gregory J. Markopoulos)
The Hart of London (Jack Chambers)
The Tenant (Polanski)
Work Done (Robert Beavers)

Olaf Möller
Afrique 50 (René Vautier)
Dialogue With a Woman Departed (1980, Leo T. Hurwitz)
The Ditch (Wang Bing)
Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1972, Straub/Huillet)
Jom (1981, Ababacar Samb-Makharam)
Outrage (1950, Ida Lupino)
The Year Long Road (1958, Giuseppe De Santis)

Films from the aggregate critics’ top 250 that I haven’t seen, or just haven’t seen lately:

Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
Mirror (Tarkovsky)
Contempt (Godard)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Shoah (Lanzmann)
Close-Up (Kiarostami)
Gertrud (Dreyer)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
The Mother and the Whore (Eustache)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
L’Eclisse (Antonioni)
Beau Travail (Denis)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
Partie de campagne (Renoir)
Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Yi Yi (Yang)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder)
Imitation of Life (Sirk)
Madame de (Ophuls)
The Conformist (Bertolucci)
The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Godard)
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
Performance (Cammell/Roeg)
The Passenger (Antonioni)
Mouchette (Bresson)
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
Days of Heaven (Malick)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)
L’Argent (Bresson)
Don’t Look Now (Roeg)
The Last Laugh (Murnau)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Alea)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
Marketa Lazarová (Vlacil)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Chimes at Midnight (Welles)
Brief Encounter (Lean)
In a Lonely Place (Ray)
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki)
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks)
Come And See (Klimov)
Cries and Whispers (Bergman)
Notorious (Hitchcock)
A Trip to the Moon (Melies)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer)
Grapes of Wrath (Ford)
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
The Music Room (Ray)
A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
Listen to Britain (Jennings)
Day of Wrath (Dreyer)
Thin Red Line (Malick)
The Conversation (Coppola)
Red Desert (Antonioni)
Kings of the Road (Wenders)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder)
Daisies (Chytilova)
West of the Tracks (Bing)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Wanda (Loden)
The Devil Probably (Bresson)
Floating Clouds (Naruse)
Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris)
The World of Apu (Ray)
The Testament of Dr Mabuse (Lang)
Kes (Loach)
Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski)

Attn: BFI, Critics, etc – this is a personal checklist made from severely abridged selections from the Sight & Sound lists, but if I’ve reposted too much of your content, give a yell and I’ll take this post offline.

Done (for now) watching Jonathan Rosenbaum’s 100 favorite films, I’ve already found another list to play with. Because I love lists. I love ’em. Really love ’em.

Cinema Scope, my favorite movie magazine in the world, doesn’t love lists nearly as much as Rosenbaum and Time Out and They Shoot Pictures do, but for their fiftieth issue a few months ago they compiled a good one: 50 Under 50 (fifty best filmmakers under the age of fifty), with articles on each one. I’m not going to spoil the entire list (yet), but you can read excerpts and order the issue from their site. Subscriptions are cheap, and practically pay for themselves, since now you can go ahead and cancel Film Comment.

Anyway I figure I’ll take a break from watching obscure old movies, and watch some obscure (but vital) recent movies. Since it’s a list of filmmakers and not film, I aim to watch at least a couple titles by each.

Here are some I’ve previously covered:

Wes Anderson: Moonrise Kingdom / Fantastic Mr. Fox / The Darjeeling Limited
Bong Joon-ho: Mother / Memories of Murder
David Fincher: The Social Network / Zodiac
Michel Gondry: Be Kind Rewind / The Science of Sleep
Jia Zhang-ke: Platform / Still Life / Dong
Mike Judge: Extract / Idiocracy
Harmony Korine: Mister Lonely / Trash Humpers
Kelly Reichardt: Meek’s Cutoff / Wendy & Lucy / Old Joy
Michael Robinson: Victory Over the Light / Light is Waiting
Steven Soderbergh: Haywire / Everything Is Going Fine / The Informant / Che
Quentin Tarantino: Inglorious Basterds / Death Proof
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Uncle Boonmee / Syndromes and a Century

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Sorry so obvious.

2. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
The only one on the list that I watched twice.

3. Finisterrae (Sergio Caballero)
4. Essential Killing (Jerzy Skolimowski)
5. The Four Times (Michelangelo Frammartino)
I was glad to see these last two on so many year-end lists, because at the time I watched them they felt like secrets – in Atlanta, at least. Finisterrae is still a secret.

6. The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)
7. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
8. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)
9. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Bromberg, Medrea & Clouzot)
10. And Everything Is Going Fine (Steven Soderbergh)
11. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
12. Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)

Runners-up:
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)
Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
The Muppets (James Bobin)
True Grit (Coens)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Best Local Film: The Little Death (Bret Wood)

Best New Horror: Red State (Kevin Smith)

The Hobo With a Shotgun Award
for the most entertaining fake-grindhouse feature of the year goes to:
Machete by Robert Rodriguez
Runner-up: Hobo With a Shotgun

1. Three by Raoul Ruiz: City of Pirates (1984), Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1985), and That Day (2003)
City of Pirates has been the one to beat since I watched it this summer. I can’t say Manuel beats it exactly, but they are highly complimentary (both concern islands, pirates, children with identity issues, etc). The other (and of course Mysteries of Lisbon) is happy proof that Ruiz never stopped making brilliant work to the end of his life. I look forward to catching up with all the rest.

2. Three by Bergman: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Magician (1958) and The Virgin Spring (1960)
I didn’t even think I liked Bergman very much until I saw Monika at Emory early this year. Then I watched each of these expecting to be let down, but I never was. So I’m grudgingly redefining myself as a huge Bergman fan.

3. Four by Josef von Sternberg: Underworld (1927), The Last Command (1928), Docks of New York (1928) and Dishonored (1931)

4. Russian Silents: Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein), By the Law (Kuleshov), Mother (Pudovkin) and Arsenal (Dovzhenko)

5. A Tale of the Wind (1988, Ivens & Loridan)
6. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

7. Victor Sjostrom: The Phantom Carriage (1921) and He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

8. The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)

9. Renoir in the 1930’s: La Chienne, Night at the Crossroads, Boudu Saved From Drowning and Toni
I didn’t get to Grand Illusion in time.

10. Kaneto Shindo horrors: Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968)

I don’t care if it’s cheating to put 25 titles in my top-10.

11. Finis Terrae (1929, Jean Epstein)
12. Nostalghia (1983, Andrei Tarkovsky)
13. I Was a Male War Bride (1949, Howard Hawks)

14. Two by Alain Resnais: Love Unto Death (1984) and Melo (1986)
Too bad about I Want To Go Home.

15. Century of the Self (2002, Adam Curtis)
16. For All Mankind (1989, Al Reinert)
Two extremely different documentaries.

17. Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)
18. The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
19. La Pointe-courte (1956, Agnes Varda)
20. Withnail & I (1986, Bruce Robinson)

21. Make Way For Tomorrow (1937, Leo McCarey)
22. Center Stage (1991, Stanley Kwan)
23. Powell & Pressburger: A Canterbury Tale and Gone to Earth
24. Hail the Conquering Hero (1944, Preston Sturges)
25. Gothic (1986, Ken Russell)
26. The Crowd (1928, King Vidor)

Runners-up:
My Life to Live (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)
The Last Bolshevik (1992, Chris Marker)
L’Assassinat du Père Noël (1941, Christian-Jaque)
The Marquise of O (1976, Eric Rohmer)
Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970, Werner Herzog)
The Last Mistress (2007, Catherine Breillat)

Finally, because his films don’t like to mingle with the others,
Jacques Rivette of the year: L’Amour Fou (1969)

1. Monika (1953, Ingmar Bergman)
Didn’t used to think I was a Bergman fan.

2. Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
Didn’t used to think I was a big Polanski fan either, until watching this on the big screen at Emory.

3. Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
Cheating: I had this same movie on the same list six years ago.

4. The Dead (1987, John Huston)
5. Knife in the Water (1962, Roman Polanski)
6. Bound (1996, Wachowskis)
7. The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles)
8. Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
The previous eight films were all shown at Emory on 35mm, for which I am grateful.

9. The Gate (1987, Tibor Takacs)
One of these things is not like the others… a low-profile 80’s horror flick at the Plaza, an old fave from childhood HBO screenings seen for the first time on the big screen.

10. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976, Nicolas Roeg)

Bonus mentions to The Mark of Zorro (1920, Fred Niblo) for the nice presentation (including a live organ score) at the Fox, and to The Lion King (1994) for looking pretty sweet in 3-D and making my wife so happy.

I didn’t watch a ton of shorts, not like I did a couple years ago.
But these were all excellent.

1. The Old Lady and the Pigeons (1998, Sylvain Chomet)
This totally made up for The Illusionist.

2. The Chorus (1982, Abbas Kiarostami)
3. Toby Dammit (1968, Federico Fellini)
4. The House Is Black (1963, Forugh Farrokhzad)
5. The Way to Shadow Garden (1954, Stan Brakhage)
The only Brakhage I watched this year. I rented the second Criterion set but wasn’t sure if I should watch it or hold out for the blu-ray. Of course there’s no reason to delay ’cause I can always watch the films a second time…

6. Plastic Bag (2009, Ramin Bahrani)
7. Land Without Bread (1933, Luis Buñuel)
After reading about this for years, I felt like I’d seen it before I saw it.

8. Monsieur Fantomas (1937, Ernst Moerman)
9. Three by Agnes Varda: 7p., cuis., s. de b. (1984), Ydessa, The Bears and etc. (2004) and Le Lion volatil (2003)
10. Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers (2001, Simonsson & Nilsson)
The short – not the feature, which was overbaked.