Tag Archives: Movies

The Biggest and Best Movie Meta-List in the History of Cinema

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Sorry for the over-the-top title, but hyperbole can be effective in getting your attention. I’ve just created a new movie meta-list – it’s the largest one I’ve ever made (791 movies) and, for the first time, I’ve arranged it in reverse chronological order so that the most recent movies are at the top. Click here to go directly to: The Big Movie List.

To make this list I put together all the movies on three other movie meta-lists from Make Lists, Not War: Best Films of All Time – Ranked; Best Films of All Time – Ranked (Older Version); and Top 200 Movies of All Time – Using a New Methodology.  Then, I took the meta-lists from Best Films – Year by Year (which covers 2002-2016) and added the top 10 movies (or more, in the case of ties) from each Year by Year list.  The result is a comprehensive list of the best movies ever made, as determined by film critics, scholars and journalists.  Since the typical “best films of all time” list tends to skimp on recent movies, the addition of the Year-by-Year lists has infused the overall list with a large number of movies from the last 20 years.

Of course, as with all lists, many will find glaring omissions (how could they leave that out???) and a few clunkers (how could they put that in???).  But that is of course the fun of lists.  Note that these are not my personal favorite 791 movies – I haven’t even seen many of them.  I did add my personal 1-10 rating for all the movies on the list that I have seen.  If you want to see a list of my favorite films, go HERE.

If you have strong opinions one way or the other, please feel free to add a comment.

If you think this list is pretty cool, feel free to share it.

 

The Making of a List – The Best 200 Movies of All Time – Using a New Method

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This post introduces a new “Top Movies” meta-list that I compiled using a completely new methodology.  Those of you familiar with my lists know that I usually make all my meta-lists the same way: I collect “Best of” lists on a specific topic from the Internet, books and magazines and give one point to an item for every list it is on.  You also know that, for complicated mathematical reasons explained HERE, I treat all lists equally, no matter how long they are (a top 10 list and a top 1000 list are not weighted differently, as long as the total number of items in the classification is much higher than 1000), and no matter where an item is on the list (in the case of a top 1000 list, for example, I treat the item at Number 1 exactly the same as the item at Number 1000).  Don’t fret – it all works out.

NOTE: The links to the new list are at the bottom of the page if you want to skip the methodology and analysis information below.

Because my traditional method for making meta-lists does not take advantage of the more complicated rating schemes available on certain websites (particularly those involving film), I thought it would be fun to use those websites to see what kind of a film list they would create.  Here’s what I did:  First, I took the top 250 movies (as rated by the public) on the website IMDb.com (the Internet Movie Database), along with the 1-10 rankings for each movie.  I then added the top 100 movies on the Rotten Tomatoes website, as determined by the site’s Tomatometer score, which uses an algorithm based on critics’ reviews.  I added to that the top 200 movies as rated by the members of the Rate Your Music website (which rates films as well as music), along with the ranking (RYM rates on a 1-5 scale, so I just doubled each score to get a 1-10 rating). To put my personal opinions in the mix, I then added every movie that I rated 10/10.  I then added all the films on the most recent Sight & Sound Magazine polls of film critics and directors (100 movies on each list, from 2012).  To get a ranking, I assigned numeric values on a 1-10 basis (10 for the top 10 movies, 9.95 for the next 10, and so on).  I took that list of nearly 500 movies and looked up for each movie the average critic score from Rotten Tomatoes (which is calculated differently from the from the Tomatometer score and tends to be lower), my personal 1-10 rating (if I had seen the film) and the critics’ rating from Metacritic.com, if available. (Metacritic doesn’t rate most older movies unless they were recently re-released or reissued.) This gave each film the possibility of up to eight 1-10 ratings.  To avoid skewing the data, I then deleted any film that did not have at least three of the eight ratings, which reduced the total number of movies on the list to 376.  Using Excel, I calculated the average rating for each movie.  The top film had a 9.67 rating; the film at the 376th spot was rated at 6.25.  I then somewhat arbitrarily selected the top 200 films on the list as the best of all time (the 200th film’s rating was 8.67).

The result is definitely not your typical best movies list: for one thing, there are quite a few very recent films; some perennial favorites are missing and some unusual selections have made it. The list sometimes rates less well-known films of a director higher than the film usually considered the director’s best.  Using my personal ratings means that many of my favorite movies are on the list (and movies I gave very low ratings did not make the cut: so long Forrest Gump, Inception, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Up and WALL-E!).  But don’t think of this as a list of my favorites.  If anything, the Sight & Sound movies received the most weight, since they are drawn from hundreds of respected movie critics and directors. Many of my top-rated movies were cut because they didn’t have a minimum of three ratings out of the eight potential sources.  So, for example, I have never seen the top three movies on the list – Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist – although you can believe I’m pushing them to the top of my Netflix queue.

I have examined the new list a bit and came up with some interesting tidbits about it, as shown in the analysis below:

MOST FEQUENTLY LISTED DIRECTORS AND THEIR MOST-LISTED FILMS

6 Films
Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)

5 FIlms
Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt)
Ingmar Bergman (Fanny and Alexander)

4 Films 
Robert Bresson (Au Hasard Balthazar)
Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai)
Federico Fellini (La Strada)
Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey)
Luis Buñuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)
Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd.)

MOST COMMON COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN AND TOP FILM FOR EACH COUNTRY

United States: 107 films (Top Film: The Godfather)
France: 27 films (Top Film: Au Hasard Balthazar)
United Kingdom: 19 films (Top Film: A Hard Day’s Night)
Italy: 16 films (Top Film: The Leopard)
Japan: 9 films (Top Film: Seven Samurai)
Germany: 8 films (Top Film: Aguirre, the Wrath of God)
USSR: 5 films (Top Film: Battleship Potemkin)
Sweden: 5 films (Top Film: Fanny and Alexander)
Denmark: 3 films (Top Film: Gertrud)
New Zealand: 3 films (Top Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) (co-production with US)

DECADES WHEN FILMS WERE PRODUCED AND TOP RATED FILM OF EACH DECADE

1910s: 1 film (Intolerance)
1920s: 12 films (Top Film: Battleship Potemkin)
1930s: 16 films (Top Film: The Rules of the Game)
1940s: 19 films (Top Film: Open City)
1950s: 33 films (Top Film: Anatomy of a Murder)
1960s: 36 films (Top Film: Au Hasard Balthazar)
1970s: 27 films (Top Film: The Conformist)
1980s: 11 films (Top Film: Shoah)
1990s: 15 films (Top Film: Pulp Fiction)
2000s: 18 films (Top Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2010s: 13 films (Top Film: Boyhood)

TOP-RATED DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Shoah (France, 1985) Dir: Claude Lanzmann
Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, 1929) Dir: Dziga Vertov
Capturing the Friedmans (US, 2003) Dir: Andrew Jarecki
The Act of Killing (Denmark, 2012) Dir: Joshua Oppenheimer
Grizzly Man (US, 2005) Dir: Werner Herzog
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Canada/US/France/Germany/UK, 2010) Dir: Werner Herzog
Man on Wire (UK/US, 2008) Dir. James Marsh
Hoop Dreams (US, 1994) Dir: Steve James
Stop Making Sense (US, 1984) Dir: Jonathan Demme

TOP-RATED MUSICALS
Singin’ in the Rain (US, 1951) Dir: Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly
A Hard Day’s Night (UK, 1964) Dir: Richard Lester
The Wizard of Oz (US, 1939) Dir: Victor Fleming
Nashville (US, 1975) Dir: Robert Altman
Once (Ireland, 2006) Dir: John Carney
La La Land (US, 2016) Dir: Damien Chazelle

TOP-RATED ANIMATED FILMS
Anomalisa (US, 2015) Dir: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson
Toy Story 3 (US, 2010) Dir: Lee Unkrich
Spirited Away (Japan, 2001) Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
Toy Story (US, 1995) Dir: John Lasseter

So now that I’ve piqued your interest, you probably want to see the new list.  Click on the links below for two versions: one is organized by rating/ranking, the other is chronological.

Top 200 Movies – By Ranking
Top 200 Movies – Chronological

The Sound of Silents: The Best Films from the Years Before Talkies

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Silent films were never silent.  At the first official movie screening by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in December 1895, a guitarist accompanied the presentation of 10 short films, including the first documentary, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, and the first comedy, The Sprinkler Sprinkled.  In the U.S. it was more common for a pianist or – in the case of major films in big cities – a small orchestra, to accompany early films, which due to lack of the requisite technology had no synchronized soundtrack.  The musicians began by improvising or linking together popular melodies to illustrate what they saw on the screen, often adding sound effects for galloping horses, thunderclaps, ringing bells and other actions. In 1908, the first fully-composed film scores appeared in France (by Camille Saint-Saens) and Russia.  The first major U.S. film to have a score was D.W. Griffith’s racist blockbuster The Birth of the Nation, with music composed by Joseph Breil, in 1915.  The giant movie theaters built in the 1910s and 1920s often incorporated immense theater organs that allowed for musical accompaniment, which usually involved a combination of following the score as well as improvisation and elaborate sound effects.  The switch to synchronized sound after the success of The Jazz Singer in 1927, a change that permitted the actors to speak their dialogue and allowed moviemakers to incorporate music into the film itself, put thousands of movie theater musicians out of work.

Modern audiences often have difficulty watching movies from the “silent” era.  The acting style necessary to communicate without spoken dialogue – essentially a form of mime – seems histrionic and over-the-top to many now.  (Even some contemporaries agreed. When Charles Chaplin made A Woman of Paris in 1923 – one of the few Chaplin films that did not star The Little Tramp – he specifically instructed his actors to adopt a more subdued acting style than was the norm. As a result the film seems more modern than many other silent films.)  The stilted, corny or moralistic tone of some of the intertitles can also be offputting to modern audiences.  On top of these substantive concerns, there are also physical problems with many silent films – many were badly preserved.  In fact, we are lucky to have any silent films left at all – it is estimated that 70% of all feature films from the pre-talkie era have deteriorated beyond repair or were deliberately destroyed after the switch to the new sound technology.

But these difficulties should not dissuade movie buffs from checking out some of the classic silent films, particularly those made in the 1920s.  It was during the silent era that filmmakers developed the basic visual vocabulary of moviemaking. By the mid-1920s, studios around the world were turning out high-quality films, some of them with dazzling visual technique and inventiveness.  In fact, the first years of sound movies, which required the noisy film cameras to be placed in soundproof (and immobile) boxes and anchored the actors to the location of the nearest microphone, saw a decrease in the cinematic inventiveness and overall quality of films. Look at many sound films from the late 1920s and early 1930s and you will see film returning to the days when everything looked like a filmed play – no moving cameras, few or no tracking shots – everything static.  The transition period is lovingly parodied by Betty Comden and Adolph Green in their screenplay for Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 musical directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

Because there was no dialogue, and intertitles could easily be translated into any language, silent film was a more international art than film after the introduction of sound. Germany during the Weimar Republic was a particularly strong producer of high-quality films in various genres: horror (Nosferatu), science fiction (Metropolis), crime thriller (Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler), and drama/social commentary (The Last Laugh; Pandora’s Box).  Several of the best German directors – Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg – brought their expertise to Hollywood in time to produce silent film masterpieces on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps the most accessible of the silent films to modern audiences are the comedies. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and other comic geniuses created personae that appeared in film after film in one outrageous fix after another.  The relative critical reputations of Chaplin and Keaton have see-sawed over the years.  At times, the sublime mix of comedy and pathos that characterizes Chaplin’s best work receives top billing; then the pendulum swings to the unsentimental acrobatics of the stone-faced Keaton, who never asks the audience for its sympathy.

I urge you to take another look at silent films, many of which are available online either free on YouTube or through a streaming service.  Or take the DVDs out of your local library.

To give you a selection of the best silent films that have been preserved, I collected 10 lists of “Best Silent Films” and made two meta-lists.  One organizes the movies by rank, that is, with the movies on the most lists at the top.  The other list is chronological.  Enjoy.

Best Silent Films of All Time – The Critics’ Picks
Best Silent Films of All Time – Chronological

My Personal Year-End Round Up: Books and Movies

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It’s not quite the end of 2016, but like many of you out there, I am in a rush for the year to be over, so I’m publishing my end of year summary a few days early.  Here are some of the highlights of my year in movie-watching and book-reading.

MOVIES
Number of Movies Seen in 2016: 64

Category
Feature Films: 37
Short Films: 17
Documentaries: 10

Date of Movie
1920-1930: 12
1930-1959: 10
1960-1979: 4
1980-1999: 3
2000-2014: 16
2015: 9
2016: 9

Highest Rated Movies
10/10
Shoe Shine (Italy, De Sica, 1946)
Anomalisa (US, Johnson & Kaufman, 2015)
Moonlight (US, Jenkins, 2016)

9/10
Ballet mécanique (France, Léger & Murphy, 1924)
The Freshman (US, Newmeyer & Taylor, 1925)
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Germany, Richter, 1928)
Lot in Sodom (US. Webber & Watson, 1933)
Meshes of the Afternoon (US, Deren & Hammid, 1943)
21-87 (US, Lipsett, 1964)
Land of Silence and Darkness (West Germany, Herzog, 1971)
The Cruise (US, Miller, 1998)
The Secret in their Eyes (Argentina, Campanella, 2009)
The Big Short (US, McKay, 2015)
45 Years (UK, Haigh, 2015)
Tangerine (US, Baker, 2015)
Son of Saul (Hungary, Jeles, 2015)

BOOKS
Number of books finished in 2016: 12

Category
Fiction: 4
Non-Fiction: 4
Epic Poems: 4

Date Published
1000-1299: 5
1300-1799: 0
1800-1999: 1
2000-2016: 6

Highest Rated Books
FIve Stars
The Tale of Genji (Japan, 1021). By Shikibu Murasaki
Europe Central (US, 2005). By William T. Vollmann
Lawrence in Arabia (UK, 2013). By Scott Anderson

Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

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If there’s one thing listers like to do, it’s make lists, and we don’t need much of an excuse. Case in point: I was wandering around the Internet the other day and found about 10 lists of “The Best Movies of the 21st Century.” Being that this century is less than 16 years old (less than 15 if you want to be technical about it), this seemed like a rush to judgment, to say the least. Nevertheless, I was intrigued enough to pull all the lists together to see which movies were on the most lists. Spoiler alert: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) was the highest vote-getter – it was on seven lists. The resulting meta-list is below, organized in chronological order – with every film that made it onto 3 or more of the 10 lists I collected. In addition to the title, number of lists, country of origin, date and director, I have added my personal 1-10 rating for those movies on the list that I have seen.

– John M. Becker

In the Mood for Love (on 5 lists)
China 2000  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Memento (on 3 lists)
US 2000  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Christopher Nolan

Yi Yi (Yi Yi: A One and a Two) (on 3 lists)
Taiwan 2000  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Edward Yang

Mulholland Drive (on 7 lists)
US 2001  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: David Lynch

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (on 5 lists)
New Zealand/US 2001  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Peter Jackson

Amélie (on 4 lists)
France 2001  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Spirited Away (on 4 lists)
Japan 2001  (JMB: 9/10)
Director:  Hayao Miyazaki

The Royal Tenenbaums (on 3 lists)
US 2001  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Wes Anderson

City of God (Cidade de Deus) (on 6 lists)
Brazil 2002  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Fernando Meirelles

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (on 4 lists)
New Zealand/US 2002  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Peter Jackson

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella) (on 3 lists)
Spain 2002  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Punch-Drunk Love (on 3 lists)
US 2002  (JMB: 8/10)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (on 4 lists)
New Zealand/US 2003  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Peter Jackson

Oldboy (on 3 lists)
South Korea 2003
Director: Park Chan-Wook

Elephant (on 3 lists)
US 2003  (JMB: 8/10)
Director: Gus Van Sant

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on 4 lists)
US 2004  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Michel Gondry

The Incredibles (on 3 lists)
US 2004  (JMB: 8/10)
Director: Brad Bird

Caché (Hidden) (on 5 lists)
France 2005  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Michael Haneke

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) (on 5 lists)
Germany 2006  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Pan’s Labyrinth (on 4 lists)
Mexico/Spain 2006
Director: Guillermo del Toro

Children of Men (on 3 lists)
US/UK 2006  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón

No Country for Old Men (on 6 lists)
US 2007  (JMB: 10/10)
Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen

There Will Be Blood (on 5 lists)
US 2007  (JMB: 9/10)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Zodiac (on 4 lists)
US 2007  (JMB: 8/10)
Director: David Fincher

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (on 3 lists)
Romania 2007  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Cristian Mungiu

Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (on 4 lists)
Sweden 2008  (JMB: 8/10)
Director: Tomas Alfredson

The Dark Knight (on 4 lists)
US 2008
Director: Christopher Nolan

The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) (on 5 lists)
Germany 2009  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Michael Haneke

The Tree of Life (on 4 lists)
US 2011  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Terence Malick

12 Years A Slave (on 3 lists)
UK/US 2013
Director: Steve McQueen

Boyhood (on 3 lists)
US 2014  (JMB: 10/10)
Director: Richard Linklater

 

My Watchlist: Favorite Films of 2015

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Another year of movie-watching having passed, I have rated all the movies I saw in the past year on a 1-10 scale and organized them into two lists.  The first list contains all the movies I’ve seen so far that were officially released in 2015.  (Note: I saw several of these films in 2016. )  The second list contains all the movies I saw in calendar year 2015 that were not released in 2015.  I am grateful that my techniques for deciding what movies to watch have become so effective that I did not see any movie that I rated below 6/10 (although, believe me, a 6/10 is a lot worse than a 10/10).  Unlike most of my lists, this is not a meta-list, with its aura of objectivity, but simply a case of my subjective personal preferences.

2015 FILMS SEEN

10
Anomalisa (US, 2015) Dir: Charlie Kaufman

9
45 Years (UK, 2015) Dir: Andrew Haigh
Spotlight (US, 2015) Dir: Tom McCarthy
The Big Short (US, 2015) Dir: Adam McKay
Heart of a Dog (US, 2015) Dir: Laurie Anderson
Room (Canada/Ireland, 2015) Dir: Lenny Abrahamson
Brooklyn (Ireland/UK/Canada, 2015) Dir: John Crowley
Tangerine (US, 2015) Dir: Sean Baker

8
Amy (UK, 2015) Dir: Asif Kapandia
Bridge of Spies (US, 2015) Dir: Steven Spielberg
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (US, 2015) Dir: J.J. Abrams

7
Grandma (US, 2015) Dir: Paul Weitz
Trainwreck (US, 2015) Dir: Judd Apatow
The Revenant (US, 2015) Dir: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
What Happened, Miss Simone? (US, 2015) Dir: Liz Garbus
Mad Max: Fury Road (Australia/US, 2015) Dir: George Miller

OTHER FILMS SEEN IN 2015

10
Forbidden Games (France, 1952) Dir: René Clément
The Virgin Spring (Sweden, 1960) Dir: Ingmar Bergman
The Act of Killing (Netherlands, 2012) Dir: Joshua Oppenheimer

9
Strike (USSR, 1925) Dir: Sergei Eisenstein
It’s a Gift (US, 1934) Dir: Norman Z. McLeod
Los Angeles Plays Itself (US, 2003) Dir: Thom Andersen
Beginners (US, 2010) Dir: Mike Mills
Poetry (South Korea, 2010) Dir: Chang-dong Lee
Barbara (Germany, 2012) Dir: Christian Petzold
Museum Hours (Austria/US, 2012) Dir: Jem Cohen
Under the Skin (UK/US, 2013) Dir: Jonathan Glazer
Mr. Turner (UK, 2014) Dir: Mike Leigh
Happy Christmas (US, 2014) Dir: Joe Swanberg
Inherent Vice (US, 2014) Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson
Goodbye to Language (France, 2014) Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
Two Days, One Night (Belgium, 2014) Dir: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

8
Scarface (US, 1932) Dir: Howard Hawks
You Only Live Once (US, 1937) Dir: Fritz Lang
Saboteur (US, 1942) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Scarlet Street (US, 1945) Dir: Fritz Lang
The Naked Kiss (US, 1964) Dir: Samuel Fuller
Henry & June (US, 1990) Dir: Philip Kaufman
Farewell My Concubine (China, 1993) Dir: Chen Kaige
The Pillow Book (UK, 1996) Dir: Peter Greenaway
American Pimp (US, 1999) Dir: Albert & Allen Hughes
Forks Over Knives (US, 2011) Dir: Lee Fulkerson
Upstream Color (US, 2013) Dir: Shane Carruth
Selma (US, 2014) Dir: Ava DuVernay
Flowers (Spain, 2014) Dir: Jon Garaño & Jose Mari Goenaga
It Follows (US, 2014) Dir: David Robert Mitchell
American Sniper (US, 2014) Dir: Clint Eastwood
Maps to the Stars (Canada, 2014) Dir: David Cronenberg
Force Majeure (Sweden/France, 2014) Dir: Ruben Östlund

7
The Far Country (US, 1954) Dir: Anthony Mann
This Boy’s Life (US, 1993) Dir: Michael Caton-Jones
Infernal Affairs (Hong Kong, 2002) Dir: Andrew Lau & Alan Mak
Waste Land (UK/Brazil, 2010) Dir: Lucy Walker
The Punk Singer (US, 2013) Dir: Sini Anderson

6
The Ruling Class (UK, 1972) Dir: Peter Medak
Snowpiercer (South Korea/US, 2014) Dir: Bong Joon-ho

IMHO: My Top Overrated and Underrated Movies

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The idea that a work of art is over- or underrated is a curious one. What does it really mean?  I think we often use the terms as a type of shorthand for, “I don’t agree with most of my friends on this [painting, TV show, movie, book, etc.].”  Sometimes ‘overrated’ means “this is getting more attention than it deserves in the press, or in winning awards” and ‘underrated’ means it’s not getting enough attention.  For me, the problem with all these definitions is that they are so highly subjective – it is easy enough to figure out what your opinion is, or mine, but what exactly are we comparing our opinions to?  What your friends like probably differs from what my friends like, so your overrated book may be my underrated discovery.  While opinions about the value of a work of art are inherently subjective, I have been wondering if there is a way to quantify objectively the work’s position in the Zeitgeist.  Without such an objective standard, our judgments of ‘overrated’ and ‘underrated’ are not only extremely variable but may be based on incorrect assumptions about our audience.  An extreme but perhaps not uncommon example is the person who is told again and again that X is overrated, but who has no idea what X is and has never seen it or heard of it before. Maybe the true goal of the speaker in such a case is not to share her opinion and spark debate on the relative value of an artwork but to demonstrate to listeners that she knows much more than they do and is so much more clued in, to the point that she is already sick and tired of all the praise she is hearing for X, something she realizes is not even on the radar for most of her listeners.

In my search for an objective standard to anchor judgments of overrated and underrated, I decided to look first to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).  I’ve been a fan of imdb.com since I first discovered it in 1995, when it was already several years old.  Although in recent years, it has come to look like a zillion other entertainment sites, lying underneath all the frills is the core of the website: a gigantic database of movies and the people who make them.  You can find every movie made by a director, every actor in a particular movie, and a wealth of information about every production.  Those who are members of imdb.com are asked to rate each movie they’ve seen on a scale of 1 to 10, and the cumulative scores are published, along with the number of voters.  For example, the number of voters giving ratings to movies I’ve seen ranges from a high of 1,546,508 ratings (for The Shawshank Redemption) to a low of 69 ratings for the 1981 music documentary Dance Craze.  For this post, I decided to go through the movies I’ve seen and compare my rating with the overall imdb.com rating.  I decided that if my rating is more than two points lower than the imdb.com rating, the movie is overrated; if my rating was more than two points higher than imdb‘s, the movie is underrated.  I stayed near the top of the lists: the overrated movies all received a 7.0 or higher average rating from imdb.com (the highest rated movies on imdb received a 9.2); to find underrated movies, I looked at all the movies I rated either a 9 or a 10.   Just to be clear, even though the overrated movies list includes some films I absolutely hated, inclusion on the list does not necessarily mean I didn’t like the movie. It may just mean that the collective imdb consciousness liked the movie a lot more than I did.

While no system is perfect, I think the average ratings given by compiling hundreds, thousands and in some cases over a million votes should give a pretty good idea of where the Zeitgeist is on a particular movie.  It is then a relatively simple process to compare one’s own ratings with the Zeitgeist and see which films are over- and underrated.  Although the entire enterprise is based on the subjective opinions of the imdb.com voters and me, there is now an objective method of determining whether one’s opinion is consistent with or divergent from the average.  Instead of using an unscientific impression of what our friends think about something, or a vague notion of how much praise something is getting in the press, we can (for movies at least) quickly and easily identify whether an item is overrated or underrated.  Here, then, are my lists of overrated and underrated movies, in chronological order.

OVERRATED
(imdb.com = 9.2 – 7.0; Make Lists, Not War = at least 2.1 points lower)

Each Dawn I Die (Keighley, US, 1939)
The Enchanted Cottage (Cromwell, US, 1945)
The Jolson Story (Green, US, 1946)
Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, US, 1954)
A Journey to the Beginning of Time (Zeman/Ladd, US/Czechoslovakia, 1955)
The Ten Commandments (De Mille, US, 1956)
Operation Petticoat (Edwards, US, 1959)
Village of the Damned (Rilla, UK, 1960)
Pocketful of Miracles (Capra, US, 1961)
Monterey Pop (Pennebaker, US, 1968)
Oliver! (Reed, UK, 1968)
Battle of Britain (Hamilton, UK, 1969)
The Sting (Hill, US, 1973)
Papillion (Schaffner, US, 1973)
The Return of the Pink Panther (Edwards, UK, 1975)
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Edwards, UK, 1976)
The Omen (Donner, US, 1976)
Star Wars (Lucas, US, 1977)
Grease (Kleiser, US, 1978)
Alien (Scott, US, 1979)
Baby Snakes (Zappa, US, 1979)
Dance Craze (Massot, UK, 1981)
The Thing (Carpenter, US, 1982)
First Blood (Kotcheff, US, 1982)
Return of the Jedi (Marquand, US, 1983)
Terms of Endearment (Brooks, US, 1983)
Trading Places (Landis, US, 1983)
The Princess Bride (Reiner, US, 1987)
Die Hard (McTiernan, US, 1988)
Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, Italy, 1988)
Major League (Ward, US, 1989)
Field of Dreams (Robinson, US, 1989)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Chechik, US, 1989)
Total Recall (Verhoeven, US, 1990)
Home Alone (Hughes, US, 1990)
Ghost (Zucker, US, 1990)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, US, 1991)
Cape Fear (Scorcese, US, 1991)
Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale/Wise, US, 1991)
Aladdin (Clements/Musker, US, 1992)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson, US, 1992)
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, US, 1993)
The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, US, 1994)
Dumb & Dumber (Farrelly, US, 1994)
True Lies (Cameron, US, 1994)
The Lion King (Allers/Minkoff, US, 1994)
Forrest Gump (Zemeckis, US, 1994)
Léon: The Professional (Besson, France, 1994)
The Usual Suspects (Singer, US, 1995)
Primal Fear (Hoblit, US, 1996)
The English Patient (Minghella, US/UK, 1996)
Titanic (Cameron, US, 1997)
Face/Off (Woo, US, 1997)
Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, US, 1997)
Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, US, 1998)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, US, 1999)
Sleepy Hollow (Burton, US, 1999)
The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, US, 1999)
Meet the Parents (Roach, US, 2000)
Finding Nemo (Stanton/Unkrich, US, 2003)
The Matrix Reloaded (Wachowskis, US, 2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (Verbinski, US, 2003)
Collateral (Mann, US, 2004)
Spider-Man 2 (Raimi, US, 2004)
Anchorman (McKay, US, 2004)
Wedding Crashers (Dobkin, US, 2005)
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Apatow, US, 2005)
King Kong (Jackson, US, 2005)
Notes on a Scandal (Eyre, UK, 2006)
The Mist (Darabont, US, 2007)
Ratatouille (Bird/Pinkava, US, 2007)
Atonement (Wright, UK, 2007)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Burton, US, 2007)
WALL-E (Stanton, US, 2008)
Up (Docter/Peterson, US, 2009)
Avatar (Cameron, US, 2009)
The Hangover (Phillips, US, 2009)
Inception (Nolan, US, 2010)
The Help (Taylor, US, 2011)
Super 8 (Abrams, US, 2011)
Source Code (Jones, US, 2011)

UNDERRATED
(ML,NW = 9.0 – 10.0; imdb.com = at least 2.1 points lower)

The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, US, 1914)
The Floorwalker (Chaplin, US, 1916)
One A.M. (Chaplin, US, 1916)
Greed (von Stroheim, US, 1924)
Napoleon (Gance, France, 1927)
Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel & Dali, France, 1929)
L’Age d’Or (Buñuel, France, 1930)
Zero for Conduct (Vigo, France 1933)
L’Atalante (Vigo, France, 1934)
Swing Time (Stevens, US, 1936)
Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, US, 1935)
Stagecoach (Ford, US, 1939)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, US, 1942)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, US, 1944)
Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Eisenstein, USSR, 1945)
My Darling Clementine (Ford, US, 1946)
The African Queen (Huston, US, 1951)
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, France 1953)
The Band Wagon (Minnelli, US, 1953)
The Naked Spur (Mann, US, 1953)
A Star is Born (Cukor, US, 1954)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, US, 1955)
Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Eisenstein, USSR, 1958)
The Trial (Welles, France, 1962)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut, France, 1962)
The Servant (Losey, UK, 1963)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pasolini, Italy, 1964)
Band of Outsiders (Godard, France, 1964)
Repulsion (Polanski, UK, 1965)
Blow-Up (Antonioni, UK, 1966)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, US, 1967)
Belle de Jour (Buñuel, France, 1967)
Faces (Cassavetes, US, 1968)
Kes (Loach, UK, 1969)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, US, 1969)
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (de Sica, Italy, 1970)
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, US, 1970)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, France, 1972)
Badlands (Malick, US, 1973)
The Conversation (Coppola, US, 1974)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, W. Germany, 1974)
Nashville (Altman, US, 1975)
3 Women (Altman, US, 1977)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, W. Germany, 1979)
Stardust Memories (Allen, US, 1980)
My Dinner with Andre (Malle, US, 1981)
The King of Comedy (Scorcese, US, 1982)
Local Hero (Forsyth, UK, 1983)
Baby It’s You (Sayles, US, 1983)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, US, 1986)
Raising Arizona (Coen, US, 1987)
Say Anything… (Crowe, US, 1989)
Short Cuts (Altman, US, 1993)
Party Girl (von Scherler Mayer, US, 1995)
I Shot Andy Warhol (Harron, US, 1996)
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Morris, US, 1997)
Happiness (Solondz, US, 1998)
Being John Malkovich (Jones, US, 1999)
All About My Mother (Almodóvar, Spain, 1999)
Waking Life (Linklater, US, 2001)
Fat Girl (Breillat, France, 2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, US, 2001)
Tarnation (Caouette, US, 2003)
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, US, 2003)
The Holy Girl (Martel, Argentina, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, US, 2004)
Born Into Brothels (Briski/Kauffmann, US, 2004)
Grizzly Man (Herzog, US, 2005)
Once (Carney, Ireland, 2006)
Juno (Reitman, US, 2007)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, Romania, 2007)
Food, Inc. (Kenner, US, 2008)
The White Ribbon (Haneke, Austria, 2009)
Take This Waltz (Polley, Canada, 2011)
The Tree of Life (Malick, US, 2011)
Museum Hours (Cohen, Austria, 2012)
Under the Skin (Glazer, UK, 2013)
Inherent Vice (Anderson, US, 2014)
Mr. Turner (Leigh, UK, 2014)
Goodbye to Language (Godard, France, 2014)

If you’re interested in other movie lists, check out these:

Best Films of All Time – The Critics’ Picks (Updated)
Best Films of All Time – Chronological

Too Soon? The 21st Century Movie List

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We’re only 14 1/2 years into the 21st Century (technically only 13 1/2, since there was no Year Zero, but I’m going to go ahead and include the year 2000 anyway), but that hasn’t stopped listers from publishing their lists of best movies of the 21st Century, best movies since 2000, best movies of the New Millennium, etc.  And it is my job as meta-lister to put these lists together and see what, if anything, they have to offer.  I found 10 lists fitting the description – here are the films that made it onto at least two of the “Best of the 21st Century” lists.  For those movies I have seen, I have provided my personal rating on a 1-10 scale.  I expect many updates as the century continues.

NOTE:  If you want more comprehensive “Best Movies” lists, click on the hyperlinks to my recently updated Best Films of All Time – The Critics’ Picks and Best Films of All Time – Chronological lists.

7
Mulholland Dr. (2001) Dir: David Lynch (US) 10

6
City of God (Cidade de Deus) (2002) Dir: Fernando Meirelles (Brazil) 9
No Country for Old Men (2007) Dir: Joel & Ethan Coen (US) 10

5
In the Mood for Love (2000) Dir: Wong Kar-Wai (China) 10
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Dir: Peter Jackson (New Zealand/US) 10
Caché (Hidden) (2005) Dir: Michael Haneke (France) 9
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) (2006) Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Germany) 10
There Will Be Blood (2007) Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson (US) 9
The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) (2009) Dir: Michael Haneke (Germany) 10

4
Amélie (2001) Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France) 9
Spirited Away (2001) Dir: Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) 9
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) Dir: Peter Jackson (New Zealand/US) 9
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Dir: Peter Jackson (New Zealand/US) 10
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Dir: Michel Gondry (US) 10
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Dir: Guillermo del Toro (Mexico/Spain)
Zodiac (2007) Dir: David Fincher (US) 8
Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (2008) Dir: Tomas Alfredson (Sweden) 8
The Dark Knight (2008) Dir: Christopher Nolan (US)
The Tree of Life (2011) Dir: Terence Malick (US) 10

3
Memento (2000) Dir: Christopher Nolan (US) 9
Yi Yi (2000) Dir: Edward Yang (Taiwan) 10
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Dir: Wes Anderson (US) 10
Talk to Her (Hable con Ella) (2002) Dir: Pedro Almodóvar (Spain) 9
Punch-Drunk Love (2002) Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson (US) 8
Oldboy (2003) Dir: Park Chan-Wook (South Korea)
Elephant (2003) Dir: Gus Van Sant (US) 8
The Incredibles (2004) Dir: Brad Bird (US) 8
Children of Men (2006) Dir: Alfonso Cuarón (US/UK) 9
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) Dir: Cristian Mungiu (Romania) 10
12 Years A Slave (2013) Dir: Steve McQueen (UK/US)
Boyhood (2014) Dir: Richard Linklater (US) 10

2
Requiem for a Dream (2000) Dir: Darren Aronofsky (US) 10
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) Dir: Béla Tarr (Hungary)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Dir: Ang Lee (Taiwan/US/Hong Kong/China) 8
Dancer in the Dark (2000) Dir: Lars von Trier (Denmark) 8
American Psycho (2000) Dir: Mary Harron (US)
Ghost World (2001) Dir: Terry Zwigoff (US) 9
Fat Girl (À ma sœur!) (2001) Dir: Catherine Breillat (France) 10
Donnie Darko (2001) Dir: Richard Kelly (US) 8
The Piano Teacher (2001) Dir: Michael Haneke (France/Austria) 9
A.I. – Artificial Intelligence (2001) Dir: Steven Spielberg (US)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) Dir: Joel & Ethan Coen (US) 7
Moulin Rouge! (2001) Dir: Baz Luhrmann (Australia/US) 10
Far From Heaven (2002) Dir: Todd Haynes (US)
The Son (2002) Dir: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne (France/Belgium)
Adaptation (2002) Dir: Spike Jonze (US) 8
Finding Nemo (2003) Dir: Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich (US) 7
Capturing the Friedmans (2003) Dir: Andrew Jarecki (US) 10
Lost In Translation (2003) Dir: Sofia Coppola (US) 8
Dogville (2003) Dir: Lars Von Trier (Denmark) 10
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003) Dir: Quentin Tarantino (US) 7
Shaun of the Dead (2004) Dir: Edgar Wright (UK) 7
Tropical Malady (2004) Dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand)
Before Sunset (2004) Dir: Richard Linklater (US) 9
Grizzly Man (2005) Dir: Werner Herzog (US) 10
A History of Violence (2005) Dir: David Cronenberg (US/Canada) 9
Brokeback Mountain (2005) Dir: Ang Lee (US/Canada) 7
The Squid and the Whale (2005) Dir: Noah Baumbach (US) 9
The Departed (2006) Dir: Martin Scorsese (US) 8
Once (2007) Dir: John Carney (Ireland) 10
Encounters at the End of the World (2007) Dir: Werner Herzog (US) 10
Juno (2007) Dir: Jason Reitman (US) 10
Superbad (2007) Dir: Greg Mottola (US) 7
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) Dir: Andrew Dominik (US) 8
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Dir: Danny Boyle (UK) 10
In Bruges (2008) Dir: Martin McDonagh (UK)
The Hurt Locker (2008) Dir: Kathryn Bigelow (US) 8
The Headless Woman (2008) Dir: Lucrecia Martel (Argentina)
Synecdoche, New York (2008) Dir: Charlie Kaufman (US)
Adventureland (2009) Dir: Greg Mottola (US)
Inglourious Basterds (2009) Dir: Quentin Tarantino (US/Germany) 7
The Social Network (2010) Dir: David Fincher (US)
A Separation (2011) Dir: Asghar Farhadi (Iran) 9
Melancholia (2011) Dir: Lars von Trier (Denmark) 8
Margaret (2011) Dir: Kenneth Lonergan (US)
The Act of Killing (2012) Dir: Joshua Oppenheimer (Denmark/Norway/UK) 10
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Dir: Wes Anderson (US) 10
The Great Beauty (2013) Dir: Paolo Sorrentino (Italy) 9

GENERAL NOTE:  Some readers assume that the lists on this site contain my personal opinions about my favorite movies, books, music, etc.  This assumption is FALSE.  The list above and most of the other lists on Make Lists, Not War do not represent my personal opinion of what is best – they contain the combined wisdom (such as it is) of multiple listers – often critics, academics and other experts – whose lists I have combined.  I have found over many years of collecting lists that combining the opinions of multiple experts provides much more useful information than the personal views of any individual.  While the website does contain some lists of my personal favorites, they are few in number and clearly marked as such.

Favorite Movies Seen in 2014*

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The following is a list of movies I saw for the first time in 2014 that I rated 4.5 or 5.0 stars out of 5.  The list includes movies that were made in 2014 and before, and also includes a couple of 2014 movies that I saw in January 2015 (hence the asterisk above).  The idea of reducing one’s opinion about a movie to a single 1-5 rating has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me – there are so many facets to filmmaking that I sometimes wish we could rate each facet separately: the writing, cinematography, editing, sound, soundtrack, acting, etc.  (Or just discuss them without ratings – there’s an idea.)  But I do find it useful to rate the movies, if only for occasions like this list.

5 Stars
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
Transcendent – Linklater and his actors have the power to create moments of true life that are evocative without being melodramatic; it is as much a story about parenting as growing up.
Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
An unevenness almost brought it down to a 4.5, but the chase sequence is the best I’ve ever seen, and the surreal section in which Buster steps into the movie screen is a timeless work of genius.

4.5 Stars
Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)
Joanna Newsom reading Thomas Pynchon as a manic pixie voice over; Omar in a cameo; Josh Brolin gruff but lovable; Owen Wilson, wacky but lovable; Katherine Waterston deceptive but lovable; and over them all is Joaquin’s Doc in a haze of pot smoke continuing to prove that he is the best of his generation (not just Her and The Master, go back to Gladiator, and Inventing the Abbotts and especially To Die For)
Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh, 2014)
Remember Topsy-Turvy?  This is that history-buff Mike Leigh, not the contemporary working class dramedy director of Secrets & Lies (OK, they’re the same person). Timothy Spall gives the performance of a lifetime, but just as important are the women in his life – each of whom is etched in acid.  Thankfully, Leigh never tells you who to vote for.
The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
Like Fellini before him, Sorrentino is not afraid to let you know there is a real person behind the camera as well as in front of it; he has a photographer’s eye for great shots; the aging central character has many loves, not the least Rome and himself.
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowksi, 2013)
In early 1960s Poland, a young novitiate has a chance to explore the secular world before taking her vows – she goes on the road with an aunt and a journey of self-discovery, through the gray snowy towns and forests.  The tone is never sentimental or cliche – but there are secrets and surprises.
Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013)
Alright alright alright! This has been an amazing run for Matthew McConaughey – I’ve seen this, Mud, The Paperboy, and Bernie in the past couple of years and he is stellar in every one.  Once again, the writing, direction and acting manage to take a potentially maudlin, sticky-sentimental tale and keep it real.
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013)
Almost every Coen brothers movie is a bit of a disappointment to me, because they are usually very close to perfect, but just miss the mark somewhere.  Still, they are so good that a near miss still rates a 4.5 from me.  Is Goodman right on the money or way over the top?  What does the cat symbolize?  (It symbolizes his pet.)  Are the songs his voiceover?
Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)
Spike Jonze likes to start with an out-there concept (his own or Charlie Kaufman’s), but it doesn’t work without real human emotion.  The conceit here is that the ‘real’ relationship is with a machine, a kinder, gentler HAL 9000 who sounds just like Scarlet Johansson.
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
The third part of the trilogy that might be called Boyhood: The Prologue.  Every 10 years or so, we check in with a couple we met on a train so long ago.  This one is about marriage and so there is of course, a big fight.  And a reconciliation?
The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2011)
A heartbreaking unpredictable tale of an abandoned boy and the woman who tries to make a home for him.
Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog, 2011)
Werner Herzog doesn’t get the death penalty.  And he is not afraid to voice his criticisms in his Werner Herzogian way while interviewing two boys who committed a random murder, one of whom is on death row.
Crazy Love (Dan Klores & Fisher Stevens, 2007)
A typical American love story, except for the part about hiring someone to throw acid in your girlfriend’s face.
Caché (Hidden) (Michael Haneke, 2005)
Hitchcockian suspense tale about a family that is being watched, but they don’t know why.  Keeps you thinking right until the very last frame.
Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)
Just young people doing what they do, except for the raping maybe.  The Thing that Wouldn’t Leave.
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
Casting Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe was like casting Woody Allen as Superman – and Robert Altman knew exactly what he was doing.  Altman’s 70’s rethinking of the detective flick involves self-indulgence, ennui and worshipping lots of false idols.  Oh – and Marlowe’s cat is missing (what does that symbolize?).
A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)
Take Belmondo and Seberg’s conversations from Breathless and convert them into a parody of sit-com dialogue and you’ll get an idea of this light-hearted experiment from Godard.
Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
Wheat, wheat, fields of wheat.  And a tractor.  Change comes to the Ukraine.
Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)
American actress Louise Brooks made her best movie in Germany.  It’s a morality tale about a good-time girl who gets her comeuppance, but it’s the fun times we remember.
Safety Last (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
The famous climb up the side of the building is the highlight, but there are lots of gags before and after, and even a fair amount of character development.

 

The Best of 2014: Your Meta-Lists Have Arrived

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When historians look back on 2014, they will probably remember it for one event: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine and annexation of the Crimea.  Putin’s action hearkened back to a long line of precedent of unilateral annexation by such power-mongers and empire builders as Cyrus the Great of Persia, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Tughril Beg, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and so many more. But for those who follow pop culture, the highlights of the year involved names like: FKA Twigs, Taylor Swift, Perfume Genius, Flying Lotus, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Anthony Doerr, Leslie Jamison and Marilynne Robinson.

Here are the meta-lists of the best movies, music and books of 2014, as determined by a critical consensus.

Best Films of 2014
Best Books of 2014
Best Music of 2014