Various Critics' Top Ten Lists

Jordan Cronk

Eric Hynes

Kent Jones

Michael Koresky

Dennis Lim

Andréa Picard

Nick Pinkerton

James Quandt

James Quandt Top Ten Lists

All of these lists are sourced from Artforum, except as noted, and after 2002 are (roughly) by premiere year.

2002 [Village Voice]

• *Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow)
• Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk)
• I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
• In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard)
• La Captive (Chantal Akerman)
• The Orphan of Anyang (Wang Chao)
• Platform (Jia Zhangke)
• Remembrance of Things to Come (Chris Marker & Yannick Bellon)
• Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov)
• What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)

2003

1. Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Come and Go (João César Monteiro)
3. Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
4. The Ground/The Hedge Theater (Robert Beavers)
5. The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki)
6. Model Shop (Jacques Demy)
7. Remembrance of Things to Come (Chris Marker & Yannick Bellon)
8. The Son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
9. Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)
10. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)

2004

1. The World (Jia Zhangke)
2. Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. 10e Chambre, Instant d'audiences (Raymond Depardon)
4. Rheimetall/Victoria 8 (Rodney Graham)
5. Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
6. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
7. Vento di terra (Vincenzo Marra)
8. La Blessure (Nicolas Klotz)
9. The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller)
10. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Theo Angelopoulos)

2005

1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
2. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
3. The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov)
4. Garlands (T.J. Wilcox)
5. Palast (Tacita Dean)
6. Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky)
7. Moments choisis des Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard)
8. La Trahison (Philippe Faucon)
9. Last Days (Gus Van Sant)
10. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)

2006

1. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)
2. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
4. Kodak (Tacita Dean)
5. Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
6. Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako)
7. Magic Mirror (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
9. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo)
10. Kristall (Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet)

2007

1. These Encounters of Theirs (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
2. Pour vos beaux yeux (Henri Storck)
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
4. Useless (Jia Zhangke)
5. Tarahi V (Haris Epaminonda)
6. La Morte rouge (Víctor Erice)
7. Fengming, a Chinese Memoir (Wang Bing)
8. The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (Eric Rohmer)
9. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov)
10. At Sea (Peter Hutton)

2008

1. Itinerary of Jean Bricard (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
2. Artemide's Knee (Jean-Marie Straub)
3. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
4. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
5. Tony Manero (Pablo Larraín)
6. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
7. United Red Army (Koji Wakamatsu)
8. Wonderful Town (Aditya Assarat)
9. Cleópatra (Júlio Bressane)
10. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)

2009

1. Wilhelm Noack oHG (Simon Starling)
2. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
3. To Die Like a Man (João Pedro Rodrigues)
4. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
5. Giardini (Steve McQueen)
6. Like You Know It All (Hong Sang-soo)
7. In Comparison (Harun Farocki)
8. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
9. Track of the Cat (William Wellman)
10. Huacho (Alejandro Fernández Almendras)

2010

1. Rite of Spring (Manoel de Oliveira)
   The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)
2. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
6. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
7. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
8. The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello)
9. The Wanderer (Avishai Sivan)
10. Static (Steve McQueen)

2011

1. Eika Katappa (Werner Schroeter)
   The Death of Maria Malibran (Werner Schroeter)
2. The Clock (Christian Marclay)
3. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
4. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
5. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
6. Play (Ruben Östlund)
7. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
8. Blood of My Blood (João Canijo)
9. Aita (José María de Orbe)
10. Porfirio (Alejandro Landres)

2012

1. Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz)
   La Maleta (Raúl Ruiz)
2. The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
3. In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo)
4. No (Pablo Larraín)
5. Perret in France and Algeria (Heinz Emigholz)
6. The Repentant (Merzak Allouache)
7. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
8. Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
9. Wild Girl (Raoul Walsh)
10. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)

2013

1. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
2. 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing)
3. Three Exercises of Interpretation (Cristi Puiu)
4. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
5. The King's Body (João Pedro Rodrigues)
6. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
   Manuscripts Don't Burn (Mohammad Rasoulof)
7. Ravel Ravel (Anri Sala)
8. The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann)
9. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
10. Salvation Army (Abdellah Taïa)

2014

1. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)
3. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
4. Das Spektrum Europas (Cristi Puiu)
5. Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo)
6. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
7. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)
8. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
9. Above and Below the Minhocão (Mark Lewis)
10. August Winds (Gabriel Mascaro)

2015

1. Labour in a Single Shot (Harun Farocki & Antje Ehmann)
2. Visit, or Memories and Confessions (Manoel de Oliveira)
3. Bleak Street (Arturo Ripstein)
4. Singularity (Albert Serra)
5. Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro)
6. Ashes (Steve McQueen)
7. The Films and Videos of Michaël Borremans
8. Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello)
9. Actua 1 (Philippe Garrel)
10. "The Owners of Dixie," from The Arabian Nights Trilogy, Vol. 2, The Desolate One (Miguel Gomes)

2016

1. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
2. From the Branches Drops the Withered Blossom (Paul Meyer)
3. Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)
4. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
5. The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues)
6. Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)
7. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
8. Neruda (Pablo Larraín)
9. Kékszakállú (Gaston Solnicki)
10. As Without So Within (Manuela De Laborde)

2017

1. "The Boat Is Leaking. The Captain Lied." (Fondazione Prada, Venice)
2. Jean Vigo (Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, Italy)
3. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
4. Western (Valeska Grisebach)
5. The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho)
6. Faces Places (Agnès Varda & JR)
7. Closeness (Kantemir Balagov)
8. 12 Days (Raymond Depardon)
9. Caniba (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
10. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)

2018

1. Dead Souls (Wang Bing)
2. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. A Man Walks in the City (Marcello Pagliero)
4. Thomas Bayrle (New Museum, New York)
5. The Manet and Ravel Sequences from La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
6. Elegant Beast (Yuzo Kawashima)
7. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
8. The Load (Ognjen Glavonic)
9. Ayka (Sergey Dvortsevoy)
10. The Black Book (Valeria Sarmiento)

Nick Pinkerton Top Tens

All of these lists are by release year.

2007 [Indiewire]

• Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
• Bug (William Friedkin)
• Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
• The Exterminating Angels (Jean-Claude Brisseau)
• Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)
• Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)
• Poison Friends (Emmanuel Bourdieu)
• The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang)
• We Own the Night (James Gray)
• Youth Without Youth (Francis Ford Coppola)

2008 [Indiewire]

• I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar (Philippe Garrel)
• Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas)
• The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
• The Foot Fist Way (Jody Hill)
• W. (Oliver Stone)
• La France (Serge Bozon)
• Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols)
• Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks)
• My Brother Is an Only Child (Daniele Luchetti)
• State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman)

2011 [LA Weekly]

• The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica)
• The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
• Final Destination 5 (Steven Quale)
• The Future (Miranda July)
• The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
• The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
• Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
• La Pivellina (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel)
• The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski)

2012 [Village Voice via Year-End Lists]

• Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos)
• Bernie (Richard Linklater)
• The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies)
• The Grey (Joe Carnahan)
• Haywire (Steven Soderbergh)
• Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)
• Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
• Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
• Wanderlust (David Wain)
• Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

2013 [Unknown via CriticsTop10]

• To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
• Bastards (Claire Denis)
• The Canyons (Paul Schrader)
• The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai)
• Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
• Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
• Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
• Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

2014 [Sight & Sound]

1. The Immigrant (James Gray)
2. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
3. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
4. La Sapienza (Eugène Green)
5. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)

Also mentioned: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman), Heaven Knows What (Josh & Benny Safdie), Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry), Hellaware (Michael M. Bilandic), Wild Canaries (Lawrence Michael Levine), The Mend (John Magary), Actress (Robert Greene), Ne me quitte pas (Sabine Lubbe Bakker & Niels van Koevorden), Manakamana (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez), National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman), Kumiko the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner), Buzzard (Joel Potrykus), Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood), Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara), Pasolini (Abel Ferrara), Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas), Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve), Horse Money (Pedro Costa)

2015 [Film Comment]

• Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)
• Blackhat (Michael Mann)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German)
• Heaven Knows What (Josh & Benny Safdie)
• Inside Out (Pete Docter)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
• Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
• Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)

2016 [Film Comment]

• The Academy of Muses (José Luis Guerin)
• The Illinois Parables (Deborah Stratman)
• Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
• The Other Side (Roberto Minervini)
• The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
• Silence (Martin Scorsese)
• Sully (Clint Eastwood)
• Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)
• 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing)

2017 [Film Comment]

1. Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
2. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
3. Downsizing (Alexander Payne)
4. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)
5. By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
6. Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie)
7. All These Sleepless Nights (Michal Marczak)
8. mother! (Darren Aronofsky)
9. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh)
10. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler)

2018 [Film Comment]

• Araby (João Dumans & Affonso Uchoa)
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
• First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
• Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross)
• Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)
• The Mule (Clint Eastwood)
• The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
• Personal Problems (Bill Gunn)
• Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)

Andréa Picard Top Ten Lists

These lists are sourced as follows: Village Voice 2007-2009, Senses of Cinema 2013-2018 (runners-up were in the original lists), except as noted, and by release year until 2009, and by premiere year onwards.

2007

1. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
3. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)
4. Flandres (Bruno Dumont)
5. Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel)
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
7. Belle Toujours (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako)
9. Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
10. In Between Days (So Yong Kim)

2008

1. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot)
2. The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (Eric Rohmer)
3. Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
4. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov)
5. The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
6. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
7. Love Songs (Christophe Honoré)
8. Slingshot (Brillante Mendoza)
9. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo)
10. Profit motive and the whispering wind (John Gianvito)

2009

1. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
2. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
3. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
4. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
5. Import/Export (Ulrich Seidl)
6. Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo)
7. Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
8. Frontier of the Dawn (Philippe Garrel)
9. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
10. Serbis (Brillante Mendoza)

2013

1. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
2. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
3. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
4. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
5. 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing)
6. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
7. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
8. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
9. A Thousand Suns (Mati Diop)
   The King's Body (João Pedro Rodrigues)
   Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
10. Mouton (Gilles Deroo & Marianne Pistone)

2014

1. P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)
2. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
3. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. Nathalie Granger (Marguerite Duras)
5. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
6. Das Spektrum Europas (Cristi Puiu)
7. Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)
8. Kommunisten (Jean-Marie Straub)
9. Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo)
10. The Innocents (Jean-Paul Kelly)
    Brouillard: Passage #14 (Alexandre Larose)
    The Dragon Is the Frame (Mary Helena Clark)

2015 [Sight & Sound]

• Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)
• The Assassin (Hou hsiao-hsien)
• Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• Visit, or Memories and Confessions (Manoel de Oliveira)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)

2016 [possibly unranked list]

1. Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)
2. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
3. The Dreamed Path (Angela Schanelec)
4. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
5. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
6. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)
7. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)
8. The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues)
9. The Dreamed Ones (Ruth Beckermann)
10. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)

Runners-Up: Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro), Mimosas (Oliver Laxe), Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie), Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa), Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve), Ta'ang (Wang Bing), A Magical Substance Flows Into Me (Jumana Manna), Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki), All the Cities of the North (Dane Komljen), What Means Something (Ben Rivers), Tales of Two Who Dreamt (Andrea Bussmann & Nicolás Pereda), Homo Sapiens (Nikolaus Geyrhalter), Faire la parole (Eugène Green)

2017

1. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
2. Western (Valeska Grisebach)
3. On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo)
4. Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
5. Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie)
6. Araby (João Dumans & Affonso Uchoa)
7. Also Known as Jihadi (Eric Baudelaire)
8. Streetscapes [Dialogue] (Heinz Emigholz)
9. The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho)
10. The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki)

Runners-Up: Milla (Valérie Massadian), PROTOTYPE (Blake Williams), NOW (Chantal Akerman with Claire Atherton, Marian Goodman Paris), "The Boat Is Leaking. The Captain Lied." (Fondazione Prada, Venice), Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont), Onward Lossless Follows (Michael Robinson), Good Luck (Ben Russell), Caniba (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel), Braguino (Clément Cogitore), Le fort des fous (Narimane Mari), Aliens (Luis Carrasco), Dislocation Blues (Sky Hopinka), Occidental (Neïl Beloufa), The Day AFter (Hong Sang-soo), Jacques Tourneur (Locarno Film Festival retrospective), Farocki/Petzold (Centre Pompidou)

2018

1. Transit (Christian Petzold)
2. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
4. Dead Souls (Wang Bing)
5. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? (Roberto Minervini)
6. L. COHEN (James Benning)
7. In My Room (Ulrich Köhler)
8. Ada Kaleh (Helena Wittmann)
9. The Load (Ognjen Glavonic)
10. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

Runners-Up: Parsi (Eduardo Williams), Your Face (Tsai Ming-liang), Burning (Lee Chang-dong), The House That Jack Built (LArs von Trier), Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher), Altiplano (Malena Szlam), The Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Williams), Grass (Hong Sang-soo), Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham), Infinite Football (Corneliu Porumboiu), Fainting Spells (Sky Hopinka), I diari di Angela – Noi due cineasti (Yervant Gianikian), The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos), La Flor (Mariano Llinás), Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt), Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan), Casanova Gene (Luise Donschen), High Life (Claire Denis), Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry), Wild Relatives (Jumana Manna), Introduzione all’Oscuro (Gastón Solnicki), Portraits (Tacita Dean retrospective at Cinéma du Réel, Centre Pompidou), Funk Lessons & Some Reflective Surfaces (Adrian Piper MOMA retrospective), Roi Soleil (Albert Serra), I Hope I'm Loud When I'm Dead (Beatrice Gibson), Terra Franca (Leonor Telles), The Films of S.N.S. Sastry (presented by Federico Rossin), Allegro Largo Triste (Aurélien Froment), I Can See Forever (Jeremy Shaw), Black Mother (Khalik Allah), Monelle (Diego Marcon)John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (Julien Faraut), Climax (Gaspar Noé)

Dennis Lim Top Tens

These lists are sourced as follows: Village Voice 1998-2005, Indiewire 2006-2012, Film at Lincoln Center 2013-2018, except as noted, and by release year until 2012, and by premiere year onwards.

1998

1. Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai)
   
2. Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes)
3. Hana-bi (Takeshi Kitano)
4. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
5. The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan)
6. Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh)
7. Affliction (Paul Schrader)
8. There's Something About Mary (Peter & Bobby Farrelly)
9. Love Is the Devil (John Maybury)
10. The Hanging Garden (Thom Fitzgerald)

Honorable Mentions: The Truman Show (Peter Weir), Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov), Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo), Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan), First Love, Last Rites (Jesse Peretz), La Vie de Jésus (Bruno Dumont), La Sentinelle (Arnaud Desplechin), Gonin (Takashi Ishii), The Kingdom II (Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred), Rushmore (Wes Anderson), Beloved (Jonathan Demme), The Eel (Shohei Imamura), The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen)

1999

1. Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
2. Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)
5. eXistenZ (David Cronenberg)
6. Rosetta (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
7. Leila (Dariush Mehrjui)
8. Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Patrice Chéreau)
9. Last Night (Don McKellar)
10. Fight Club (David Fincher)

2000

1. Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
2. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
3. L'Humanité (Bruno Dumont)
4. Pola X (Leos Carax)
5. The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
6. Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
7. Lies (Jang Sun-woo)
8. Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay)
9. Criminal Lovers/Water Drops on Burning Rocks (François Ozon)
10. Rapture/Fervor (Shirin Neshat)

A Dozen Runners-Up: Wonderland (Michael Winterbottom), The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola), Suzhou River (Lou Ye), Spectres of the Spectrum (Craig Baldwin), Hollow Man (Michael Verhoeven), Praise (John Curran), Traffic (Steven Soderbergh), Gohatto (Nagisa Oshima), Orphans (Peter Mullan), Crane World (Pablo Trapero), Time Regained (Raúl Ruiz), Meet the Parents (Jay Roach)

2001

1. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
3. In the Bedroom (Todd Field)
4. Intimacy (Patrice Chéreau)
5. The Low Down (Jamie Thraves)
6. Under the Sand (François Ozon)
7. The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
8. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)
9. Little Otik (Jan Svankmajer)
10. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)
11. Last Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski)
12. Memento (Christopher Nolan)
13. Together (Lukas Moodysson)
14. Our Song (Jim McKay)
15. Zoolander (Ben Stiller)
16. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
17. Audition (Takashi Miike)
18. Pootie Tang (Louis C.K.)
19. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
20. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)

2002

1. Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin)
2. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
4. Time Out (Laurent Cantet)
5. Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
6. The Sleepy Time Gal (Christopher Munch)
7. I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom)
9. Adaptation. (Spike Jonze)
10. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
11. Sentimental Destinies (Olivier Assayas)
    Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay)
    Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov)

2003

1. Platform (Jia Zhangke)
2. Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhangke)
3. demonlover (Olivier Assayas)
4. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. In My Skin (Marina de Van)
6. Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
7. School of Rock (Richard Linklater)
8. Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin)
9. The Son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
10. The Slaughter Rule (Alex & Andrew J. Smith)
11. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Guy Maddin)
12. An Injury to One (Travis Wilkerson)
13. 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle)
14. X2 (Bryan Singer)
15. Bus 174 (José Padilha)
16. Japón (Carlos Reygadas)
17. Stuck on You (Peter & Bobby Farrelly)
18. Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)
19. Suddenly (Diego Lerman)
20. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)

2004

1. I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell)
2. Primer (Shane Carruth)
3. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
4. Dogville (Lars von Trier)
5. Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
6. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak)
8. Son frère (Patrice Chéreau)
9. A Talking Picture (Manoel de Oliveira)
10. Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom)
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
11. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo)
12. Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
13. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
14. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
15. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)
16. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
17. Oasis (Lee Chang-dong)
18. Strayed (André Téchiné)
19. The Agronomist (Jonathan Demme)
20. Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)

2005

1. Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
2. The Power of Nightmares (Adam Curtis)
3. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
4. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
5. Caché (Michael Haneke)
6. The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis)
7. Last Days (Gus Van Sant)
8. Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
9. L'Intrus (Claire Denis)
10. Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper)/Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter)/Chain (Jem Cohen)/The World (Jia Zhangke)
11. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki)
12. The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel)
13. Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski)
14. Keane (Lodge Kerrigan)
15. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
16. Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho)
17. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai)

2006

1. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
2. L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
3. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater)
4. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
6. Borat (Larry Charles)
7. Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
8. 4 (Ilya Khrzhanovsky)
9. Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski)
10. The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)

2007

1. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
2. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)
3. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. Zodiac (David Fincher)
5. Offside (Jafar Panahi)
6. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
8. Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran)
9. Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel)
10. Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)

2008

1. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
2. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot)
3. Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
4. In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
5. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
6. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
7. The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
8. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
9. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
10. Milk (Gus Van Sant)

2009

1. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
4. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
5. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
6. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
7. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
8. Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo)
9. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
10. Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski)

2010

1. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)
2. World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
3. Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
4. Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
5. Wild Grass (Alain Resnais)
6. Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette)
7. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
8. Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)
9. Ghost Town (Zhao Dayong)
10. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)

2012 [Senses of Cinema]

1. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
2. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
3. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
4. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. differently, Molussia (Nicolas Rey)
6. Morning of Saint Anthony's Day (João Pedro Rodrigues)
7. Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
8. Barbara (Christian Petzold)
9. The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
10. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)

A dozen more: Bestiaire (Denis Côté), Drug War (Johnnie To), Easy Rider (James Benning), Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira), Greatest Hits (Nicolás Pereda), Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami), Memories Look at Me (Song Fang), Museum Hours (Jem Cohen), Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson), No (Pablo Larraín), Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas), Student (Darezhan Omirbaev)

2013

1. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
2. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
3. Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
4. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
5. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
6. Manakamana (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez)
7. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
8. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
9. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
10. Mouton (Gilles Deroo & Marianne Pistone)

2014

1. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
2. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
4. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello)
6. The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid)
7. P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)
8. The Princess of France (Matías Piñeiro)
9. Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)
10. Phoenix (Christian Petzold)

2015

1. Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)
2. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
4. Visit, or Memories and Confessions (Manoel de Oliveira)
5. Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello)
6. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
7. Kaili Blues (Bi Gan)
8. In the Shadow of Women (Philippe Garrel)
9. Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro)
10. Poet on a Business Trip (Ju Anqi)

2016 [direct message]

1. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)
2. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
3. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)
4. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
5. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
6. Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)
7. By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
8. Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)
9. Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro)
10. The Dreamed Path (Angela Schanelec)

2017

1. Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
2. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
3. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. Western (Valeska Grisebach)
5. Streetscapes [Dialogue] (Heinz Emigholz)
6. The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)
   On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo)
   Claire's Camera (Hong Sang-soo)
7. Downsizing (Alexander Payne)
8. Araby (João Dumans & Affonso Uchoa)
9. Tonsler Park (Kevin Jerome Everson)
10. Electro-Pythagoras: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett (Luke Fowler)

2018

1. Transit (Christian Petzold)
2. La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
3. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
4. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
5. Classical Period (Ted Fendt)
6. Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)
7. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)
8. High Life (Claire Denis)
9. Dead Souls (Wang Bing)
10. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? (Roberto Minervini)

Michael Koresky Top Tens

All of these lists are by NYC release year.

2003 [Film Comment]

1. The Son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
2. Dogville (Lars von Trier)
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
5. Love & Diane (Jennifer Dworkin)
6. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
7. Since Otar Left (Julie Bertuccelli)
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)
9. Angels in America (Mike Nichols)
10. Irréversible (Gaspar Noé)

2004 [Film Comment]

1. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
2. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
4. Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont)
5. The Village (M. Night Shyamalan)
6. Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard)
7. Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)
8. Primer (Shane Carruth)
9. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
10. Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski)

2005 [Village Voice]

1. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai)
2. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. The New World (Terrence Malick)
4. L'Intrus (Claire Denis)
5. Caché (Michael Haneke)
6. Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
7. Breakfast on Pluto (Neil Jordan)
8. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
9. Junebug (Phil Morrison)
10. War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg)

2007 [Village Voice]

1. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
5. Offside (Jafar Panahi)
6. No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
7. Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel)
8. Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
9. Flandres (Bruno Dumont)
10. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)

2008 [Indiewire]

1. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
2. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman)
3. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)
4. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
5. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
6. Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
7. Ballast (Lance Hammer)
8. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
9. The Class (Laurent Cantet)
10. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot)

2009 [Indiewire]

1. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
2. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
3. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
4. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
5. Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
6. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
7. Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)
8. Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)
9. Coraline (Henry Selick)
10. A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)

2010 [Indiewire]

1. Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
2. Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
3. Another Year (Mike Leigh)
4. White Material (Claire Denis)
5. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
6. Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
7. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
9. Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos)
10. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont)

2012 [Unknown via CriticsTop10]

1. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies)
2. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
3. Kill List (Ben Wheatley)
4. The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
5. Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
6. Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman)
7. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
8. I Wish (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
9. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
10. You Are Here (Daniel Cockburn)

2013 [Unknown via CriticsTop10]

1. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
2. To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
5. Post Lenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
6. In the Fog (Sergei Loznitsa)
7. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
8. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
9. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
10. Passion (Brian De Palma)

2014 [Unknown via CriticsTop10]

1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
2. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
3. Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi)
4. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
5. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
6. Manakamana (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez)
7. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)
8. Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)
9. National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman)
10. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent)

2015 [Sight & Sound, by premiere year]

• The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Taxi (Jafar Panahi)
• Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg)

2016 [Film at Lincoln Center]

1. Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
2. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
3. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)
4. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weereasethakul)
5. No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
6. Sunset Song (Terence Davies)
7. Silence (Martin Scorsese)
8. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
9. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
10. The Other Side (Roberto Minervini)

2017 [Film Comment]

• 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo)
• By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
• A Ghost Story (David Lowery)
• The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)
• The Lost City of Z (James Gray)
• Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
• Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• The Post (Steven Spielberg)
• A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
• Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)

2018 [Film Comment]

• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Bisbee '17 (Robert Greene)
• Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
• Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Hereditary (Ari Aster)
• If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
• Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)
• Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)
• Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
• Zama (Lucrecia Martel)

Kent Jones Top Tens

All of these lists are sourced from Film Comment, except as noted, and are by (NYC) premiere year.

1996

1. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
   Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
   Thieves (André Téchiné)
   Crash (David Cronenberg)
2. My Sex Life...or How I Got Into an Argument (Arnaud Desplechin)
   My Favorite Season (André Téchiné)
   The Phantom Heart (Philippe Garrel)
   Love's Debris (Werner Schroeter)
   Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
   Vive L'Amour (Tsai Ming-liang)
3. Le Garçu (Maurice Pialat)
   A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
   Kardiogramma (Darezhan Omirbayev)
   A Portrait of Arshile (Atom Egoyan)

1997

1. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
   Kundun (Martin Scorsese)
   The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
2. The Sweet Hereafter/Sarabande (Atom Egoyan)
   Ulee's Gold (Victor Nuñez)
   From Today Until Tomorrow (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)/Seventh Heaven (Benoît Jacquot)
   Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman)
   The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
   Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov)
   Affliction (Paul Schrader)
   Triste (Nathaniel Dorsky)/The Present (Robert Frank)/If You Stand With Your Back to the Slowing of the Speed of Light in Water (Julie Murray)
3. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)/The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola)

1998

1. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
2. Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksei German)
3. Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
4. Variations (Nathaniel Dorsky)
5. Late August, Early September (Olivier Assayas)
6. Dr. Akagi (Shohei Imamura)
7. Henry Fool (Hal Hartley)
8. Same Old Song (Alain Resnais)
9. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory)
10. Rushmore (Wes Anderson)

1999 [alphabetical except for first film]

• Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
• American Movie (Chris Smith)
• Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
• Belfast, Maine (Frederick Wiseman)
• Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese)
• Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders)/Negative Space (Chris Petit)/Frontline: "Snitch" (Ofra Bikel)
• eXisTenZ (David Cronenberg)
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
• The Letter (Manoel de Oliveira)/Sicilia! (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
• Rosetta (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
• Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh)
• The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)

2000

1. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
2. Origins of the 21st Century (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. Arbor Vitae (Nathaniel Dorsky)
4. Gohatto (Nagisa Oshima)
5. Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
6. Platform (Jia Zhangke)
7. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
8. Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
9. Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng)

2001

1. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
2. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)
3. Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman)
4. Loin (André Téchiné)
5. I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
6. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
7. Micro Garden (Stan Brakhage)
8. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
9. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)
10. The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel & Ethan Coen)
11. Confessions of a Sociopath (Joe Gibbons)
12. POV: "Jung (War): In the Land of the Mujaheddin" (Alberto Vendemmiati & Fabrizio Lazzaretti)
13. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
14. Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 PM (Claude Lanzmann)
15. Shallow Hal (Peter & Bobby Farrelly)
16. ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami)
17. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis)
18. In the Bedroom (Todd Field)
19. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
20. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)

2002

• POV: "Afghanistan Year 1380" (Alberto Vendemmiati & Fabrizio Lazzaretti)
• Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• demonlover (Olivier Assayas)
• Friday Night (Claire Denis)
• Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
• The Son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
• Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
• Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
• Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar)
• Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhangke)

Shorts: Voice of the Prophet (Bob Edwards), Int. Trailer - Night (Jim Jarmusch)
And one great scene: An SS officer peering through a window at a demonstration of the new gas chambers in Costa-Gavras's Amen
Best Dog: Scooby Doo

2003

1. Gambling, Gods and LSD (Peter Mettler)
2. Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-ok)
5. Ford Transit (Hany Abu-Assad)
6. The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
7. Le Monde vivant (Eugène Green)
8. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
9. A Mighty Wind (Christopher Guest)
10. Domestic Violence 2 (Frederick Wiseman)
11. S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Rithy Panh)
12. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
13. In This World (Michael Winterbottom)
14. Strayed (André Téchiné)
15. School of Rock (Richard Linklater)

2004

1. The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller)
   The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel)
   Saraband (Ingmar Bergman)
2. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)
   Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
   Clean (Olivier Assayas)
3. The Garden (Frederick Wiseman)
   Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
   Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
   Pin Boy (Ana Poliak)
   Sideways (Alexander Payne)
   Spartan (David Mamet)
   Triple Agent (Eric Rohmer)

2005

1. L'Intrus (Claire Denis)
2. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
3. The New World (Terrence Malick)
4. Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel)
5. No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese)
6. A Visit to the Louvre (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
7. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
8. Tale of Cinema (Hong Sang-soo)
9. L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
10. Panorama Ephemera (Rick Prelinger)
11. Avenge But One of My Two Eyes (Avi Mograbi)
12. Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad)

2006

1. Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
2. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
3. Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood)
4. When the Levees Broke (Spike Leigh)
5. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
6. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater)
7. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo)
8. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Jonathan Demme)
9. The Go Master (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
10. Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater)

2007

1. Zodiac (David Fincher)
2. Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
6. The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (Eric Rohmer)
7. These Encounters of Theirs (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
8. No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
9. Retribution (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
10. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)

2008

1. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
   RR (James Benning)
   Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
2. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)
   Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
   The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
   Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater)
   Generation Kill (Susanna White and Simon Cellan Jones)
   The Frontier of Dawn (Philippe Garrel)/Chouga (Darezhan Omirbaev)
3. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)/Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry)
   35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
   Wall•E (Andrew Stanton)

2009

1. White Material (Claire Denis)
2. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
3. A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
5. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
6. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
7. Wild Grass (Alain Resnais)
8. Bright Star (Jane Campion)
9. Pandora's Box (Yesim Ustaoglu)
10. Moloch Tropical (Raoul Peck)

2010

1. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
   The Social Network (David Fincher)
2. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica)
   Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
3. Another Year (Mike Leigh)
   Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
   Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
   Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
   True Grit (Joel & Ethan Coen)
   Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Revelatory viewing experience: The amazing 3-D festival at Film Forum, the highlight of which was Roy Ward Baker's Inferno

2011

• The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)
• Hugo/George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese)
• The Karski Report (Claude Lanzmann)
• The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
• Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
• Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes)
• Seeking the Monkey King (Ken Jacobs)
• The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
• Words of Mercury (Jerome Hiler)

2012

• Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)
• Bernie (Richard Linklater)
• Haywire (Steven Soderbergh)
• Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
• In the Stone House (Jerome Hiler)
• Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
• The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
• small roads (James Benning)
• Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)

2013 [alphabetical except for first two films]

• The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann)
• Song + Spring (Nathaniel Dorsky)
• Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
• Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
• The End of Time (Peter Mettler)
• Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
• A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
• The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

2014

• Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
• Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)
• Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve)
• Gone Girl (David Fincher)
• Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
• Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
• Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
• National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman)

2015

• The Assassin (Kent Jones)
• Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg)
• Brooklyn (John Crowley)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson)
• Junun (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Mistress America (Noah Baumbach)
• My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
• A Poem Is a Naked Person (Les Blank)

2016 [alphabetical except for first film]

• Silence (Martin Scorsese)
• 13th (Ava DuVernay)
• Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
• I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)
• The Lost City of Z (James Gray)
• Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
• Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
• Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
• Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
• Whose Country? (Mohamed Siam)

2017 [Sight & Sound]

• Mindhunter (David Fincher)
• Faces Places (Agnès Varda & JR)
• Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)
• Arthur Miller: Writer (Rebecca Miller)