criterionforum.org

01 The White Ribbon
02 A Serious Man
03 Police, Adjective
04 Summer Hours
05 I Killed My Mother
06 White Material
07 The Limits of Control
08 Revanche ***
09 Air Doll
10 Up in the Air

11 Fantastic Mr. Fox
12 The Road
13 Mother
14 Whatever Works ***
15 Sweetgrass
16 Mother and Child ***
17 (500) Days of Summer
18 In the Loop ***
19 Julie & Julia
20 The Cove

the rest in order

Up
Alamar ***
Zombieland
Adventureland
The Informant! ***
Duplicity ***
Inglourious Basterds
Moon

08.16.15

new ***

1 - (500) Days of Summer - 10/10
2 - The Cove - 10/10
3 - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire - 10/10
4 - Inglourious Basterds - 9/10
5 - A Serious Man - 9/10
6 - The Secret in Their Eyes - 9/10
7 - Up - 9/10
8 - Watchmen - 9/10
9 - Avatar - 9/10
10 - Coraline - 8/10



Other films seen:


Adventureland - 6/10
Angels & Demons - 6/10
The Art of the Steal - 8/10
Away We Go - 5/10
The Blind Side - 6/10
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story - 8/10
Broken Embraces - 7/10
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - 7/10
The Damned United - 6/10
District 9 - 8/10
Drag Me to Hell - 7/10
Duplicity - 5/10
An Education - 7/10
Fantastic Mr. Fox - 8/10
The Firm - 7/10
From Time to Time - 5/10
Funny People - 6/10
G-Force - 3/10
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - 3/10
Get Low - 8/10
Green Lantern - 6/10
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench - 5/10
The Hangover - 8/10
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - 7/10
The Haunting in Connecticut - 5/10
Ink - 5/10
The International - 8/10
Invictus - 7/10
Knowing - 5/10
The Last Station - 7/10
Moon - 7/10
Mother - 7/10
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - 4/10
Observe and Report - 3/10
Old Dogs - 1/10
Ondine - 6/10
The Princess and the Frog - 7/10
Public Enemies - 6/10
Queen to Play - 6/10
Reel Injun - 7/10
The Road - 7/10
Road Trip: Beer Pong - 2/10
Sherlock Holmes - 7/10
Star Trek - 8/10
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - 6/10
Tales from the Script - 7/10
Terminator Salvation - 6/10
This Is It - 7/10
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - 2/10
2012 - 3/10
Up in the Air - 7/10
Waking Sleeping Beauty - 8/10
Whatever Works - 7/10
Where the Wild Things Are - 8/10
Winnebago Man - 8/10
Wonder Woman - 7/10
X-Men Origins: Wolverine - 5/10


Updated 2/16/17

2009 - I feel like this year more than any other I haven't seen nearly enough of the worthwhile movies to make an accurate list, but for now...

1. Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)
2. Antichrist (von Trier)
3. The Hurt Locker (Bigelow)
4. Moon (Jones)
5. Where the Wild Things Are (Jonze)
6. The White Ribbon (Haneke)
7. Public Enemies (Mann)
8. Away We Go (Mendes)
9. In the Loop (Iannucci)
10. The International (Tykwer)

Notables: Avatar, Coraline, District 9, Drag Me to Hell, Duplicity, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The House of the Devil, The Informant!, Up in the Air, Watchmen,

Documentaries: Capitalism: A Love Story

Still Missing: (500) Days of Summer, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, The Box, Bright Star, Broken Embraces, Bronson, Brothers, The Brothers Bloom The Burning Plain, The Cove, Crazy Heart, An Education, The Escapist, The Girlfriend Experience, Il Divo, It Might Get Loud, The Limits of Control, The Messenger, Orphan, Revanche, The Road, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sin Nombre, The Soloist, Sugar, Two Lovers

1. A Serious Man
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Antichrist
4. Where The Wild Things Are
5. A Single Man
6. The Informant!
7. A Prophet
8. In The Loop
9. Thirst
10. Sugar

1. Inglourious Basterds
2. The White Ribbon
3. Antichrist
4. A Serious Man
5. District 9

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
In the Loop
Moon
Up in the Air

Is it unreasonable to suggest that we possibly start locking these threads after, say, a year has passed? Not to edits of existing posts, of course, but perhaps to discourage new users from bumping every single Top Ten thread all at once with new posts?

If a thread is locked, I don't believe that posts can be edited within that thread.

The board moves so quickly that the glut of updated threads is soon overtaken by dozens of other bumped topics. So, no on that, but a strong nagging finger at updating a five year old Top TEN thread with a Top Five

domino harvey wrote:but a strong nagging finger at updating a five year old Top TEN thread with a Top Five

Sorry about that.

Also, going forward, I do know that these are technically supposed to be Top Ten lists, but depending on the quality of good films in a given year, I sometimes choose to limit myself to a Top Five -- is this allowed, or no?

If you can't make a full ten, why would you post a list at all? If you really can't find ten films in any given year to rank as the best, then you need to see more movies and post a full list at a later date

Well, depending on they year, there aren't always ten great films deserving of year-end praise... Looking at some of my old documents, I saw about 60 films in 2009, which I feel is a pretty fair number to accurately assess the year.

I'd rather have a Top Five list with films that I love, than a Top Ten list, where I have lesser feelings for half of the films.

If you saw sixty movies from 2009 and can only find five to list, then that's not a Top Ten and you shouldn't post it.

Fair enough.

Also, from the Dynamic Consensus List:

swo17 wrote:The fine print: Only the top ten films have been counted from each list in the Dynamic Top Ten threads since 2009, and lists of less than ten have not been counted. Lists not updated since early in the year are only partially counted. (Exception: I count all lists for the current year, even those that don't list ten films yet. Once the year ends, I remove any lists that haven't been filled out to ten.)

Yes, lists like this are easy for me to process for purposes of the consensus thread--I just ignore them.

criterion10 wrote:Well, depending on they year, there aren't always ten great films deserving of year-end praise... Looking at some of my old documents, I saw about 60 films in 2009, which I feel is a pretty fair number to accurately assess the year.

There absolutely are at least ten great films from every year. (Even 2008!) According to IMDb, there were 34,482 films released during 2009. Surely at least 0.03% of them approach some level of greatness.

swo17 wrote:There absolutely are at least ten great films from every year.

We're entering a very subjective argument here, and while my opinion may not be popular, I definitely have had years where I feel there have not been ten great films. Most recently, I felt 2012 was a massive disappointment with many of my most anticipated films being rather underwhelming, while I felt last year was a really great year for movies, to the point that I could have easily made a Top 15 or Top 20 if I wanted to. The truth is that it depends on the year.

Now, I definitely don't see as many films as I'd like to each year, though I'd say I average anywhere from 60-70 new releases each year (I watch many more films in general, the majority of which are older films of past eras).

Furthermore, I am being rather picky when I refer to a film as "great". Taking a look at the list that I posted on this thread, all of my honorable mentions are films that I really liked, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them "great" films, or all time favorites. The five films I have listed above them are all, IMHO, truly great, memorable, favorite films.

Going forward though, I will only post Top Ten lists for the sake of the thread and its rules.

So you've seen about 60 films that, for lack of a better term, "The Man" has told you were the ones worth seeing from this year, and only five of those were what you would call great. Fair enough. But might I suggest that The Man is wrong? Or, at least, doesn't have the complete picture? I'm pretty much willing to guarantee that if you watched every film recommended by someone in this thread, you'd eventually find ten films from this year (if not more) that you would be eager to include in your own personal top 10. And there are probably at least a few more great films from this year that all of us have missed so far. (For example, I don't think anybody had really taken notice of Triangle until a year or two ago.)

swo17 wrote:I'm pretty much willing to guarantee that if you watched every film recommended by someone in this thread, you'd eventually find ten films from this year (if not more) that you would be eager to include in your own personal top 10.

It's certainly possible, and I'll be the first person to admit that I have many more movies to see from each year that have eluded me for a while now, a result of my poor management skills.

That being said, for the time being, all I can do is judge what I've currently seen. I think 60 movies from a given year is a fair amount of films to judge it accordingly, although more is always merrier in a situation like this.

No offense to what's become an enormous success (until its sequels ruined its goodwill), but if The Hangover is one of the ten best films you saw in 2009, you need to stay hungry. Like swo said, there are so many great films released in any given year if you put some effort into trying to find them, and I say this as someone who does not see nearly as many films during their release year as I'd like to, and as someone who has more mainstream tastes than a lot of users on this forum. Just pulling in literally the first list my eyes focused in on at random, how many films have you seen that Galen Young, for one, has in his list?:

Galen Young wrote:1. Antichrist (Lars von Trier) vs. Avatar (James Cameron) it's a tie!
2. Che Part 1 & Part 2 (Steven Soderbergh)
3. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (Uli Edel)
4. The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)
5. A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
6. (untitled) (Jonathan Parker)
7. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
8. Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet)
9. Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
10. Død snø (Tommy Wirkola)

runner's up

Tokyo! (Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry)
Thirst (Park Chan-wook)
The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)
Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
Duplicity (Tony Gilroy)
The Clone Returns Home (Kanji Nakajima)

He clearly found 2009 to be a rich enough list to compile 10 films and have room for more, and so did most everyone in the top 10 threads.

mfunk9786 wrote:I say this as someone who does not see nearly as many films during their release year as I'd like to

I'll be the first person to admit that I too do not watch nearly as many films each year as I would like to; this is in part due to simply having a rather busy daily schedule, as well as mostly focusing on catching up on past, classic films that I have yet to see.

mfunk9786 wrote:but if The Hangover is one of the ten best films you saw in 2009, you need to stay hungry.

The Hangover's inclusion was in part due to the sentimental value it holds (I really enjoyed it when I saw it in theaters with friends back when it came out; I'm obviously older now, I believe I was 13 when I saw it, and doubt I would like it as much upon revisiting it).

Looking at Galen's list, I have seen Antichrist, Avatar, A Serious Man, and The Hurt Locker; the others I have not, although many have been on my radar for quite some time now.

Just to give a point of reference though, I have seen many noteworthy films, such as Crazy Heart, The Messenger, Precious, A Prophet, Public Enemies, The Secret in their Eyes, Where the Wild Things Are, and so on, and such films I did not find good enough to be featured on my year end list.

Apologies for the thread bump(s). I'm just now getting around to posting my top tens from the last several years.

1. Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Taratino
2. The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke
3. In The Loop, Armando Ianucci
4. Tokyo Sonata, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen
6. Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas
7. Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar
8. The Beaches of Agnes, Agnes Varda
9. The Road, John Hillcoat
10. Sugar, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden

Out of 69 2009 films seen:

1. Up
2. In the Loop
3. Avatar
4. The Cove
5. A Christmas Carol
6. the Most Dangerous Man in America
7. Secret of the Kells
8. Star Trek
9. District 9
10. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs


hm:
(500) Days of Summer
Coraline
Whip it
Young Victoria
Summer Wars
Julie and Julia
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Inglorious Bastards
Crazy Heart
Fish Tank

1. Cafe Noir
2. The Clone Returns Home
3. Tokyo Sonata
4. Love Exposure
5. Bad Leutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
6. Breathless
7. La Nana/The Maid
8. Limits of Control
9. Julia
10. The Watchmen

Out of 100+ 2009 films seen:

01. Der Rauber "The Robber" (Benjamin Heisenberg, Austria/Germany)
02. Public Enemies (Michael Mann, USA)
03. Pink (Rudolf Thome, Germany)
04. Lourdes (Jessica Hausner, Austria/France/Germany)
05. The Exploding Girl (Bradley Rust Gray, USA)
06. Kosmos (Reha Erdem, Turkey/Bulgaria)
07. Bakjwi "Thirst" (Chan-wook Park, South Korea)
08. Kanikosen (Sabu, Japan)
09. Viyon no tsuma "Villon's Wife" (Kichitaro Negishi, Japan)
10. Indigene d'Eurasie "Eastern Drift" (Sharunas Bartas, France/Lithuania/Russia)

1. Up
2. Mother and Child
3. Summer Hours
4. White Ribbon
5. Vincere
6. The Secret in Their Eyes
7. Public Enemies
8. Revanche
9. Everlasting Moments
10. In the Loop

Honourable Mentions : The Hurt Locker, Where the Wild Things Are, Tokyo Sonata, Watchmen, Duplicity, Accident, The Messenger, District 9, Daybreakers, Star Trek, The Road, 3 Idiots, The Fantastic Mr Fox, A Serious Man, The Informant, The Young Victoria, State of Play, Up in the Air, Coraline, Triangle, Brothers, Bright Star, Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans, Broken Embraces, Cold Souls, Inglourious Basterds, An Education, Mother, Kelin, The International, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Adventureland, 9, Samson and Delilah, Cracks, Ondine, Sherlock Holmes, Drag Me to Hell, Kaminey, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Sunshine Cleaning, Two Lovers, Knowing.


Others Seen : A Single Man, Dev D, Antichrist, House of the Devil, Delhi 6, The Hangover, Red Cliff 2, Mary and Max, Vengeance, Thirst, Luck by Chance, The Boys are Back, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, (500) Days of Summer, Rec 2, Angels and Demons, Road Movie, Avatar, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Moon, Chloe, Terminator: Salvation, 2012, Hierro, The Imaganarium of Dr Parnassus, Beautiful Kate, Splice, Zombieland, Love Aaj Kal.