1. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
2. The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies)
3. Ángel de fuego / Angel of Fire (Dana Rotberg)
4. A Sense of History (Mike Leigh)
5. Mosaferan / Travellers (Bahram Beizai)
6. Lektionen in Finsternis / Lessons of Darkness (Werner Herzog)
7. Zendegi va digar hich / Life and Nothing More... (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr)
9. Rispondetemi (Léa Pool)
10. Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembene)
11. Nassereddin Shah, Actor-e Cinema / Once Upon a Time, Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
12. Lat sau san taam / Hard Boiled (John Woo)
13. Khuda Gawah (Mukul Anand)
14. Map of the Human Heart (Vincent Ward)
15. Hyènes (Djibril Diop Mambéty)
16. Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (Craig Baldwin)
17. Careful (Guy Maddin)
18. Qiu Ju da guan si / The Story of Qiu Ju (Yimou Zhang)
19. Orlando (Sally Potter)
20. Conte d'hiver / A Tale of Winter (Éric Rohmer)
HM:
Ambition
Andrey Svislotskiy
Bad Lieutenant
Bitter Moon
The Boys of St. Vincent
Braindead
Brother's Keeper
Color Adjustment
Como agua para chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate
Cronos
Damage
Dust Devil
El mariachi
Franz Kafka
Howards End
Husbands and Wives
In the Soup
Kurenai no buta / Porco Rosso
Léolo
Lorenzo's Oil
Narges
One False Move
Qing shao nian nuo zha / Rebels of the Neon God
Reservoir Dogs
Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Simple Men
Son smeshnogo cheloveka / The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Surviving Desire
Visions of Light
Wong Fei Hung II: Nam yee tung chi keung / Once Upon a Time in China II
Comment:
A great year for watching movies, for me -
Unforgiven reignited a dormant interest in the western, and made me a lifelong Clint Eastwood fan, and this was a year where my burgeoning interest in Iranian and African cinemas really got going. In retrospect, and looking at my lists and ratings, it's as good a year as any overall, but a piss-poor one for Hollywood - only the top film on the list, and a handful of the also-rans are major studio releases. While I do think Hollywood in general has gone downhill since the 70s, this is a remarkably poor year for mainstream output from my standpoint, possibly the worst between the 1960s and COVID. Thankfully some fine indie releases, shorts and experimental work, and a slew of good-to-great films from Canada, Iran, the UK, Mexico, France and other cinematic wonderlands make it a competitive year anyway.