Best Films per Year
by Andre Soares
My "Best Films of …" lists consist of highly personal — and highly eclectic — suggestions of films you might want to check out (or avoid like the plague, depending on how you feel about my tastes).
Those lists, I should add, have not been written in stone; they’re a work in perpetual progress (one that, in fact, is currently being corrected, updated, and expanded). In other words, new names and titles are added, whereas some old ones are removed as I keep on watching good, great, and/or so-bad-they’re-good films and performances.
The "Best Films of …" categories are: Film, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Writing, Cinematography, and Original Score. At times, you’ll find a Short Film category as well.
Below are a few notes about the lists.
- Listings are organized alphabetically.
- Films are listed by year according to their original release date (festivals excluded), to the best of my knowledge. Exceptions: Movies that saw the light of day, or rather, the darkness of a film theater, years after they were made, e.g., The Plot Against Harry (made in 1969, released in 1990). In such cases, I’ve listed them according to their production date. Movies that have been shown only at festivals will have that screening as their original release date.
- Since basically every screenplay is an adaptation of something else: a book, a play, another movie, a short story, another screenplay, or even the same screenplay (which is written and rewritten and re-rewritten and so on by dozens of hands before reaching its final version), I consider all screenplays "adapted." The point is: all screenplays, whether officially "original" or "adapted," are listed in the same category.
- Also, credited writers are those who, to the best of my knowledge, wrote the final screenplay (as opposed to penning the "original story" and/or "original screenplay" that may have been so altered it became something else). Admittedly, sometimes — or perhaps more than sometimes — the person(s) who get the credit for a screenplay is/are not the one(s) responsible for the quality (or lack thereof) of the final product.
- Some East Asian names are alphabetized in reverse order (last name; first name), e.g., Gong Li (instead of Li Gong), or Zhang Yimou (instead of Yimou Zhang). Reason for this editorial choice: Gong Li is known around the world as Gong Li, not Li Gong, and that same rule applies to other East Asian film personalities.
- TV/cable feature-length films and miniseries may find their way into those lists.
"Best Films of …" Annual List
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