Category Archives: Film

The Best of 2023: Movies, TV, Music & Books

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Once again, I have compiled meta-lists of the best of the year in film, television, music, and literature.  I began undertaking this project over 20 years ago when I decided that, with limited time to read books, watch movies and TV shows, and listen to music, I wanted to reduce my chances of encountering dreck and increase the percentage of that I would encounter gems.  The solution I chose to this problem was to collect the opinions of multiple critics when they issue their end-of-year “best of” lists.  While the method is not foolproof (I do occasionally find critical faves that I don’t like, and I also sometimes run across items I rate highly that the critics didn’t like so much), it has been a success overall.  One of the best aspects of this method is that it gets me outside my comfort zone.  By collecting and collating these lists, creating the meta-lists that are linked below, I have expanded my horizons and encountered works of art that I might not have found if I had stayed within the recommendations of friends and family, or of just one favored critic.  Why go by the recommendations of one random person when you have at your fingertips the critical consensus of over a dozen experts?

Here are the links to this year’s lists:

Best Films of 2023
Best TV Shows of 2023
Best Music of 2023
Best Books of 2023

Getting Up To Speed: A Meta-List Update Report

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I’ve updated a number of the meta-lists, using original source lists I obtained from various sources, including books, magazines, and websites.  I’ve updated several of the film lists and the literature (book) lists.  I added three new film lists, including a best 100 films from Stephanie Zacharek at Time magazine, and about 10 new best literature lists.  The literature lists hadn’t been updated in almost 10 years.  Here are the links to the updated lists:

MOVIES
Best Films of All Time – Ranked
Best Films of All Time – Chronological
Best Films of All Time – By Director
Best of the 21st Century (So Far)  (Note: Only the movies section of this list has been updated.)

LITERATURE
Greatest Works of Literature – Ranked
Greatest Works of Literature – Chronological
Greatest Works of Literature – By Author
The Big Literature List: A Meta-Meta List

Some may be wondering, why make lists of the greatest literature and not the greatest books?  I have actually given this quite a bit of thought.  I do have some lists that reference books, but the category of literature gives me an opportunity to include bodies of work, not just specific books. In many cases (esp. for writers known best for their poems, essays or short stories), people making “best of” lists will simply list the author’s entire body of work, without singling out any particular poem, story or essay.  There are often multiple collections of the author’s work in the genre, but instead of randomly selecting one of these collections as a “best book”, I thought it made more sense to reference the works as bodies of work (thus the italicized items in the literature lists).  (Although when listers do reference a specific collection/compilation, I have included it.)  Because these bodies of work aren’t books as such, I’ve used the more encompassing term “literature” for these lists (even though I’m aware that the algorithms and search terms might be looking for “best books”).

The Best of 2022: The End-of-Year Lists

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I have compiled meta-lists of the best movies, TV shows, music, and books of 2022 by combining multiple end-of-year lists published in magazines, newspapers, and websites.  These lists provide a critical consensus of the year’s best.

Here are links to the lists:

Best Films of 2022
Best TV Shows of 2022
Best Music of 2022
Best Books of 2022

As a sneak preview, here are the most-listed items in each category:

Film: Aftersun
TV: Better Call Saul
Music: (tie): Beyoncé – Renaissance and Rosalía – Motomami 
Book: The Candy House. By Jennifer Egan

The Movie Quote Game – Part 1

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Identify the movie for each quote:

Hints:
(1) Oldest film: 1933.  Most recent film: 1998
(2) Four movies have two quotes each.
(3) One quote is from a short animated film.
(4) Two quotes are from foreign language films.

Give your answers in the comments!

  1. “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here.”
  2. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
  3. “Were they all done for your mother’s benefit?”/”No. No, I would not say ‘benefit.’”
  4. “Oh, you are sick!”
  5. “I gave her my love – she gave me a pen.”
  6. “I’m a little short on cash, but if you don’t mind just appetizers I’d love to take you to dinner sometime.”
  7. “He has his father’s eyes.”
  8. “I just went gay all of a sudden!”
  9. “Made it ma – top o’ the world!”
  10. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
  11. “Where are your hands?”/“Between two pillows.”
  12. “We all have it coming, kid.”
  13. “I wanna be Black…”
  14. “Greet the morning with a breath of fire…”
  15. “Asa nisi masa.”
  16. “No, you’re Don Francisco’s sister.”
  17. “Don’t drive angry.”
  18. “There’s no deceit in the cauliflower.”
  19. “Remember the night we broke the windows in this old house? This is what I wished for.”
  20. “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.”
  21. “D-d-d-d-demon!”
  22. “Twas beauty killed the beast.”
  23. “You’re lit from within, Tracy. You’ve got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts.”
  24. “I am big – it was the pictures that got small.”
  25. “We rob banks.”
  26. “I should ask the man whether he was a tree-frog.”
  27. “Mein Führer! I can walk!”
  28. “My complication had a little complication.”
  29. “Don’t be a luddy-duddy! Don’t be a mooncalf! Don’t be a jabbernowl!”
  30. “It’s like no cheese I’ve ever tasted.”
  31. “We felt that the institution no longer had anything to offer us.”
  32. “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
  33. “How much do you need?”
  34. “It’s the end of the world…”
  35. “Stop being taller than me.”
  36. “You know, I’m a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I can help you with that hump.”
  37. “Ethne – your feather.”
  38. “It’s showtime!”
  39. “I am not an animal. I am a human being!”
  40. “You want me to hold the chicken?”/“I want you to hold it between your knees.”
  41. “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
  42. “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”
  43. “Plastics.”
  44. “Well of course we talk – don’t ev’rybody?”
  45. “He was some kind of a man.”
  46. “Match me, Sidney.”
  47. “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
  48. “That rug really tied the room together.”
  49. “He can’t be a floozie. You’re a floozie.”
  50. “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”

Screen Test: The Updated Movie Lists

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I added 10 more “best movies of all time” lists to the meta-list, bringing the total number of original source lists to over 36 (I lost exact count along the way!). The new lists (all from 2020 and 2021) were identified by Enrique, a Make Lists, Not War reader – thank you Enrique for your contribution to the website!

Here are the links to the updated movie lists:
Best Films of All Time – Ranked
Best Films of All Time – Chronological
Best Films of All Time – By Director

The new lists rearranged the meta-list considerably and added two dozen new movies, many of them recent releases.  I was surprised (and a bit disheartened) to see that Pulp Fiction is now tied for first place with Citizen Kane.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Pulp Fiction is an excellent movie, but I don’t quite see it as the best movie ever.  But that’s the fun of lists – you may not agree with the listers, but you can’t deny that Pulp Fiction was on 33 “best films of all time” lists.

Below are the 24 new movies I added to the meta-list (which contains films that are on at least four of the original source lists) as a result of the update. They include five women and four Black Americans; the world of movie directing is finally becoming diverse. There are also six winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.

  1. The Gunfighter (US, 1950) Dir: Henry King (on 4 lists)
  2. The Passenger (France/Italy/US/Spain, 1975) Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni (on 4 lists)
  3. Gandhi (UK/India, 1982) Dir: Richard Attenborough (on 4 lists)
  4. Edward Scissorhands (US, 1990) Dir: Tim Burton (on 4 lists)
  5. Daughters of the Dust (US, 1991) Dir: Julie Dash (on 4 lists)
  6. Jurassic Park (US 1993) Dir: Steven Spielberg (on 5 lists)
  7. Forrest Gump (US, 1994) Dir: Robert Zemeckis (on 5 lists)
  8. Clueless (US, 1995) Dir: Amy Heckerling (on 5 lists)
  9. Titanic (US, 1997) Dir: James Cameron (on 5 lists)
  10. Life is Beautiful (Italy, 1997) Dir: Roberto Benigni (on 4 lists)
  11. Good Will Hunting (US, 1997) Dir: Gus Van Sant (on 5 lists)
  12. The Hurt Locker (US, 2008) Dir: Kathryn Bigelow (on 5 lists)
  13. Avatar (US, 2009) Dir: James Cameron (on 5 lists)
  14. Amour (France/Austria/Germany, 2012) Dir: Michael Haneke (on 4 lists)
  15. Carol (US/UK, 2015) Dir: Todd Haynes (on 4 lists)
  16. La La Land (US, 2016) Dir: Damien Chazelle (on 5 lists)
  17. Moonlight (US, 2016) Dir: Barry Jenkins (on 8 lists)
  18. Call Me By Your Name (Italy/US/France/Brazil, 2017) Dir: Luca Guadagnino (on 4 lists)
  19. Lady Bird (US, 2017) Dir: Greta Gerwig (on 7 lists)
  20. Get Out (US, 2017) Dir: Jordan Peele (on 8 lists)
  21. Roma (Mexico/US, 2018) Dir: Alfonso Cuarón (on 4 lists)
  22. Black Panther (US, 2018) Dir: Ryan Coogler (on 4 lists)
  23. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France, 2019) Dir: Céline Sciamma (on 4 lists)
  24. Parasite (South Korea, 2019) Dir: Bong Joon-ho (on 6 lists)

 

Thank You, Next: The Best of 2021

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I’ve published meta-lists of the best films, albums, TV shows, and books of 2021.  I made these lists by combining numerous “best of” lists I found online.  Here are the links:

Best Films of 2021
Best TV Shows of 2021
Best Music of 2021
Best Books of 2021

The most popular and the most critically-acclaimed rarely line up and 2021 was no exception.  There was very little overlap between the bestselling films, books and music and the critics’ favorites.  An exception was television, where the critics and audiences seemed to appreciate the same shows.

For example, the top grossing movies globally were:

  1. Spider-Man: No Way Home (US, Jon Watts)
  2. The Battle at Lake Changjin (China, Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark & Dante Lam)
  3. Hi, Mom (China, Jia Ling)
  4. No Time to Die (UK/US, Cary Joji Fukunaga)
  5. F9 (US, Justin Lin)
  6. Detective Chinatown 3 (China, Chen Sicheng)
  7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (US, Andy Serkis)
  8. Godzilla vs. Kong (US, Adam Wingard)
  9. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (US, Destin Daniel Cretton)
  10. Eternals (US, Chloé Zhao)

But the top critically-acclaimed films were:

1. Licorice Pizza (US, Paul Thomas Anderson)
2. Drive My Car (Japan, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
3. The Power of the Dog (UK/US/New Zealand, Jane Campion)
4. Dune (US, Denis Villeneuve)
5. The Souvenir Part II (UK, Joanna Hogg)
6. The French Dispatch (US, Wes Anderson)
7. Summer of Soul (US, Ahmir Khalib Thompson)
8. The Worst Person in the World (Norway, Joachim Trier)
9. Petite Maman (France, Céline Sciamma)
10. The Velvet Underground (US, Todd Haynes)
11. The Card Counter (US, Paul Schrader)
12. Annette (France, Leos Carax)
13. The Green Knight (US/Canada, David Lowery)
14. The Lost Daughter (US, Maggie Gyllenhaal)

The most popular songs of the year were:

  1. Save Your Tears — The Weeknd ft. Ariana Grande
  2. MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) — Lil Nas X
  3. Levitating — Dua Lipa feat. Da Baby
  4. Blinding Lights — The Weeknd 
  5. drivers license — Olivia Rodrigo
  6. good 4 u — Olivia Rodrigo
  7. Kiss Me More — Doja Cat ft. Sza 
  8. Stay – The Kid Laroi ft. Justin Bieber
  9. Positions – Ariana Grande
  10. Peaches – Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar & Giveon

But the most critically-acclaimed albums were:

  1. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra – Promises
  2. Tyler, the Creator – Call Me if You Get Lost
  3. Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
  4. Low – Hey What
  5. Little Simz – Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
  6. Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
  7. Olivia Rodrigo – Sour
  8. The Weather Station – Ignorance
  9. Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
  10. Turnstile – Glow On

For books, the story was similar.  Here are the year’s bestsellers (book published in 2021):

  1. Dog Man: Mothering Heights. By Dav Pilkey
  2. The Four Winds. By Kristin Hannah
  3. American Marxism. By Mark R. Levin
  4. The Last Thing He Told Me. By Laura Dave
  5. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. By Charlie Mackesy
  6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot. By Jeff Kinney
  7. A Court of Silver Flames. By Sarah J. Maas
  8. The Judge’s List. By John Grisham
  9. Twelve and a Half. By Gary Vaynerchuk
  10. The Real Anthony Fauci. By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The list of top critically-acclaimed books is very different:

1, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.  By Patrick Radden Keefe
2. Harlem Shuffle. By Colson Whitehead
3. Detransition, Baby. By Torrey Peters
4. Great Circle. By Maggie Shipstead
5. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir.  By Michelle Zauner
6. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.  By Clint Smith
7. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance.  By Hanif Abdurraqib
8. Crossroads.  By Jonathan Franzen  
9. Hell of a Book. By Jason Mott
10. Cloud Cuckoo Land. By Anthony Doerr
11. No One Is Talking About This. By Patricia Lockwood
12. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.  By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
13. Klara and the Sun.  By Kazuo Ishiguro
14. The Prophets.  By Robert Jones Jr.
15. Afterparties: Stories. By Anthony Veasna So

The Best of 2020: Films, TV, Music & Books

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I’ve published the year-end meta lists for movies, TV, books and music. Here are the links:

Best Films of 2020
Best TV Shows of 2020
Best Music of 2020
Best Books of 2020

If you’re interested in my personal favorites from the year, I’ve set them out below. As you can see, I don’t normally focus on the most recent releases, but tend to watch, read, and listen to items from various time periods.

Favorite films watched in 2020:

Rated 10/10
The Life of Oharu (Japan, 1954) Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi
Cleo from 5 to 7 (France, 1962) Dir: Agnes Varda
Night of the Living Dead (US, 1968) Dir: George Romero
Songs from the Second Floor (Sweden, 2000) Dir: Roy Andersson
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (US, 2020) Dir: Charlie Kaufman

Rated 9/10
Au hasard Balthazar (France, 1966) Dir: Robert Bresson
Z (France, 1969) Dir: Costa-Gavras
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Yugoslavia, 1971) Dir: Dusan Makavejev
The Passenger (Italy/France, 1975) Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni
Stalker (USSR, 1979) Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
Paris, Texas (Germany/US, 1984) Dir: Wim Wenders
Come and See (USSR, 1985) Dir: Elem Klimov
Uncut Gems (US, 2019) Dir: Joshua & Ben Safdie
American Factory (US, 2019) Dir: Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar

Favorite books read in 2020:

The Faerie Queen (UK, 1590, 1596). By Edmund Spenser
King Lear (UK, 1605). By William Shakespeare
Tartuffe (France, 1664). By Moliere
Paradise Lost (UK, 1667). By John Milton
Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (UK, 1669). By John Locke
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Japan, 1702). By Matsuo Basho
The Genius of the Later English Theater (UK, 1962). Edited by Sylvan Barnet
A Thousand Acres (US, 1991). By Jane Smiley.
Time’s Arrow (UK, 1991). By Martin Amis
Jazz (US, 1992). By Toni Morrison
Operation Shylock (US, 1993). By Philip Roth

Favorite TV shows watched in 2020:

The Queen’s Gambit
Unorthodox
Shtisel
Atypical
Call My Agent
Lovesick

Albums listened to most frequently in 2020

Father John Misty – Pure Comedy (2017)
Bob Dylan – No Direction Home: Bootleg Series Vol. 7
Waxahatchee – Out in the Storm (2017)
Charlie Musselwhite – Sanctuary (2004)
Blind Lemon Jefferson – Blind Lemon Jefferson (1925-1929)
David Bowie – The Singles 1969-1993
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (2011)
St. Vincent – Masseduction (2017)
Big Thief – U.F.O.F. (2019)
Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo (2018)
Steely Dan – Can’t Buy A Thrill (1972)
T-Bone Walker – The Complete Imperial Recordings (1950-1954)
The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema (2005)
Brittany Howard – Jaime (2019)
John Dowland – Farewell, Unkind – Songs and Dances (2007) (Joel Cohen & Boston Camerata)
Count Basie – Complete Decca Recordings (1937-1939)

The Best of 2019: Books, Music, Movies & TV

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Every year in December, various publications and websites announce their best of the year lists in various categories, and every December I collect those lists and combine them into meta-lists.  Usually I make lists of best books, movies and music (albums), but this year I added TV shows, in acknowledgement that we are in a period of unprecedented quality in television.  Here are the meta-lists for 2019:

Best Films of 2019
Best Books of 2019
Best Music of 2019
Best TV Shows of 2019

2018: The Year in Review in Books, Music and Movies

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Finally, some good news: the annual meta-lists of best books, music, and movies have arrived!  As always, I need to remind everyone that these are not my personal opinions – they are compilations of multiple lists published in newspapers, magazines and websites. I have not read all these books, listened to all this music or seen all these movies.

Here they are:

Best Books of 2018
Best Music of 2018
Best Films of 2018

Some random observations:

Every year, the “best of the year” lists seem to come earlier and earlier, just like Christmas music in the stores.  I’m guessing this has to do with the retailers’ desire to use these lists to inspire holiday gift givers to make purchases (of books and music) and get folks out to see the movies on the lists.  I just hope that movies, books and albums released in late December get considered for next year’s lists.

Another thing that is changing (i.e., expanding) is the length of nonfiction book subtitles (the stuff after the colon).  The publishing industry needs to take a chill pill on this – pretty soon, the entire first chapter is going to be on the cover of the book.  Maybe the worst offender this year is: BOOM TOWN: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its
Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming
a World-Class Metropolis.  

The Wikipedia genre descriptions for musical acts (which I include in the Best Music lists) make me laugh.  Like one band that is described as both “punk” and “post-punk” – how is that logically possible?  (And how is “post-punk” different from “post-punk revival”? Is post-punk already dead such that someone had to revive it? And if so, why are some bands still referred to as “post-punk”?)  Also, the proliferation of “cores.” I assume that “hardcore” was the first one, but now there are “grindcore”, “slowcore” and “sadcore” (I’m sure I’m missing some). Not to mention “shoegaze.”

 

My Favorites By Decade: Music, Books and Movies

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I made a list of my favorite books, movies and albums from each decade since the 1950s. I chose to begin with the 1950s, as that was the decade that the long-playing record album was introduced. I limited my picks to 12 or fewer in each category.

NOTE: To be clear, these are works of music, literature and film that were produced during the decades listed – it doesn’t mean I read, saw or listened to them during that particular decade (which would be particularly difficult for the 1950s, since I wasn’t born then!).

1950s

Albums
Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) – Frank Sinatra
Jazz at Massey Hall (1956) – The Quintet (Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Roach, Mingus)
After Midnight (1957) – Nat “King” Cole
West Side Story (1957) – Original Broadway Cast
Birth of the Cool (1957) – Miles Davis
Brilliant Corners (1957) – Thelonious Monk
Saxophone Colossus (1957) – Sonny Rollins
At the Opera House (1958) – Stan Getz & J.J. Johnson
Somethin’ Else (1958) – Cannonball Adderley
Blues from the Gutter (1959) – Champion Jack Dupree
Kind of Blue (1959) – Miles Davis
The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) – Ornette Coleman

Books
Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) – Marguerite Yourcenar
Invisible Man (1952) – Ralph Ellison
Henry James: A Life (1953) – Leon Edel
Nine Stories (1953) – J.D. Salinger
The Foundation Trilogy (1953) – Isaac Asimov
Lucky Jim (1954) – Kingsley Amis
The Inheritors (1955) – William Golding
Lolita (1955) – Vladimir Nabokov
The Lord of the Rings (1956) – J.R.R. Tolkien
A Death in the Family (1957) – James Agee
Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnameable (1958) – Samuel Beckett
The Tin Drum (1969) – Günter Grass

Movies
Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly & Donen, 1952)
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953)
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
The Apu Trilogy (Ray, 1955-1959)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

1960s

Albums
The Incredible Jazz Guitar (1960) – Wes Montgomery
Sunday at the Village Vanguard & Waltz for Debby (1962) – Bill Evans
Live at the Regal (1965) – B.B. King
A Love Supreme (1965) – John Coltrane
Highway 61 Revisited (1965) – Bob Dylan
Tristan und Isolde (1966) – Richard Wagner (Bayreuther Festspiele, Karl Böhm)
Chicago/The Blues/Today! (1966) – Various Artists
Blonde on Blonde (1966) – Bob Dylan
Revolver (1966) – The Beatles
The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) – The Velvet Underground
The Beatles [White Album] – The Beatles
Tommy (1969) – The Who

Books
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) – William L. Shirer
Franny and Zooey (1961) – J.D. Salinger
The Golden Notebook (1962) – Doris Lessing
A Clockwork Orange (1962) – Anthony Burgess
Labyrinths (1962) – Jorge Luis Borges
Cat’s Cradle (1963) – Kurt Vonnegut
V. (1963) – Thoman Pynchon
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1966) – William Hinton
Giles Goat-Boy (1966) – John Barth
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) – Gabriel García Márquez
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) – Tom Wolfe
The Double Helix (1968) – James D. Watson

Movies
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
L’Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
The Exterminating Angel (Buñuel, 1962)
Vivre Sa Vie (Godard, 1962)
La Jetée (Marker, 1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
The Servant (Losey, 1963)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
Repulsion (Polanski, 1965)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969)

1970s

Albums
Moondance (1970) – Van Morrison
Plastic Ono Band (1970) – John Lennon
Blue (1971) – Joni Mitchell
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) – Pink Floyd
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973) – Paul Simon
Quadrophenia (1973) – The Who
Blood on the Tracks (1975) – Bob Dylan
Born to Run (1975) – Bruce Springsteen
Music of the Gothic Era (1976) – Early Music Consort of London (David Munrow)
Ice Pickin’ (1978) – Albert Collins
This Year’s Model (1978) – Elvis Costello
The Roches (1979) – The Roches

Books
A Theory of Justice (1971) – John Rawls
Invisible Cities (1972) – Italo Calvino
The Gulag Archipelago (1973) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Breakfast of Champions (1973) – Kurt Vonnegut
Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) – Thomas Pynchon
All the President’s Men (1974) – Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) – Robert Pirsig
Ragtime (1975) – E.L. Doctorow
Song of Solomon (1977) – Toni Morrison
The Family Crucible (1977) – Augustus Napier
The Stories of John Cheever (1978) – John Cheever
On Human Nature (1978) – E.O. Wilson

Movies
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel, 1972)
Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974)
The Godfather: Part II (Coppola, 1974)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975)
3 Women (Altman, 1977)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

1980s

Albums
Remain in Light (1980) – Talking Heads
Making Movies (1980) – Dire Straits
Pirates Choice (1982) – Orchestra Baobab
Imperial Bedroom (1982) – Elvis Costello
Legend (1984) – Bob Marley
Rain Dogs (1985) – Tom Waits
King of America (1986) – Elvis Costello
So (1986) – Peter Gabriel
The Joshua Tree (1987) – U2
Shadowland (1988) – k.d. lang

Books
A People’s History of the United States (1980) – Howard Zinn
The White Hotel (1981) – D.M. Thomas
Midnight’s Children (1981) – Salman Rushdie
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) – Raymond Carver
The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) – Ernst Mayr
White Noise (1984) – Don DeLillo
Money: A Suicide Note (1984) – Martin Amis
Common Ground (1985) – J. Anthony Lukas
World’s End (1987) – T.C. Boyle
And the Band Played On (1987) – Randy Shilts
Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) – James M. McPherson
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years (1988) – Taylor Branch

Movies
Stardust Memories (Allen, 1980)
Raging Bull (Scorcese, 1980)
My Dinner With Andre (Malle, 1981)
The King of Comedy (Scorcese, 1982)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
Local Hero (Forsyth, 1983)
Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)
Raising Arizona (Coen & Coen, 1987)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)

1990s

Albums
Goodbye Jumbo (1990) – World Party
Out of Time (1991) – R.E.M.
Aurora Gory Alice (1993) – Letters to Cleo
Whatever (1993) – Aimee Mann
Exile in Guyville (1993) – Liz Phair
To Bring You My Love (1995) – PJ Harvey
Garbage (1995) – Garbage
Odelay! (1996) – Beck
OK Computer (1997) – Radiohead
A Go Go (1998) – John Scofield
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) – Lucinda Williams
69 Love Songs (1999) – The Magnetic Fields

Books
The Things They Carried (1990) – Tim O’Brien
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos (1991) – Dennis Overbye
Consciousness Explained (1991) – Daniel C. Dennett
Mating (1991) – Norman Rush
Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary (1992) – Tim Riley
Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995) – Janet Browne
Ship Fever (1996) – Andrea Barrett
Infinite Jest (1996) – David Foster Wallace
Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (1997) – Richard Fortey
The God of Small Things (1997) – Arundhati Roy
Annals of the Former World (1998) – John McPhee
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998) – Philip Gourevich

Movies
Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
Short Cuts (Altman, 1993)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Before Sunrise (Linklater, 1995)
Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)
Secrets & Lies (Leigh, 1996)
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Morris, 1997)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 1997)
Happiness (Solondz, 1998)
The Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998)
Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999)
Magnolia (P.T. Anderson, 1999)
All About My Mother (Almodóvar, 1999)

2000s

Albums
Fado em Mim (2000) – Mariza
I Am Shelby Lynne (2000) – Shelby Lynne
Strories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) – PJ Harvey
Sweet Tea (2001) – Buddy Guy
The Id (2001) – Macy Gray
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) – Wilco
Fever to Tell (2003) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Electric Version (2003) – The New Pornographers
Funeral (2004) – Arcade Fire
Shostakovich: String Quartets (2006) – Emerson String Quartet
Boys and Girls in America (2006) – The Hold Steady
Bird-Brains (2009) – Tune-Yards

Books
White Teeth (2000) – Zadie Smith
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) – Dave Eggers
Atonement (2001) – Ian McEwan
Austerlitz (2001) – W.G. Sebald
Middlesex (2002)  – Jeffrey Eugenides
Europe Central (2005) – William T. Vollmann
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005) – Charles C. Mann
Never Let Me Go (2005) – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) – Michael Pollan
The Inheritance of Loss (2006) – Kiran Desai
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) – Alex Ross
The Hemingses of Monticello (2008) – Annette Gordon-Reed

Movies
Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Yang, 2000)
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)
Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky, 2000)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
Waking Life (Linklater, 2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
Talk to Her (Almodóvar, 2002)
Dogville (von Trier, 2003)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007)
No Country for Old Men (Coen, 2007)

2010s (so far)

Albums
The Suburbs (2010) – Arcade Fire
The King Is Dead (2011) – The Decemberists
Let England Shake (2011) – PJ Harvey
Yuck (2011) – Yuck
Four Sonatas by Charles Ives (2011) – Hilary Hahn & Valentina Lisitsa
Bad As Me (2011) – Tom Waits
Visions (2012) – Grimes
Pedestrian Verse (2013) – Frightened Rabbit
Brill Bruisers (2014) – The New Pornographers
Monteverdi (2016) – Magdalena Kožená
My Woman (2016) – Angel Olsen
Antisocialites (2017) – Alvvays

Books
Cleopatra: A Life (2010) – Stacy Schiff
Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music (2010) – Tim Riley
There But For the (2011) – Ali Smith
Tenth of December (2013) – George Saunders
The Riddle of the Labyrinth (2013) – Margalit Fox
Lawrence in Arabia (2013) – Scott Anderson
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2013) – Elena Ferrante

Movies
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog, 2010)
The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011)
Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012)
The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer, 2012)
Boyhood (Linklater, 2014)
Anomalisa (Kaufman & Johnson, 2015)
Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016)
The Florida Project (Baker, 2017)