A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#200-151)

Getting close to the (initial) end of the Top 1000 list.  The introduction is here and the rest of the list can be found by going here.  Films through Inglourious Basterds (#174) are a 95 which is high ****.  The rest are a 96.  A 96 is, to me, worthy of a Best Picture win.  That means any Oscar winners from that point on, even if they don’t win the Nighthawk, earn no complaints from me.  Ironically, one of those films doesn’t even earn a Nighthawk nomination (The Hours) because 2002 is just that tough.  There are also a few films that come 5th in their years while the only actual Nighthawk winners in this post are all 95 films.  Things are so even across genres and major studios that only one film in this group of 50 is in the Top 5 all-time for its genre or major studio.

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A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#300-251)

Another part of my countdown of the 1000 greatest films through 2011.  Through Pinocchio, these are all a 94 and after that, they are all a 95.  So, high ****.  The introduction can be found here.  Previous entries can be found here.

 

A Century of Film: Mysteries

A Century of Film

Mysteries

The Genre

 

“What about Film Noir?” Veronica asked me as I was talking about this category.  But, as I explained to her, Film Noir itself isn’t a genre, but a style that moves across multiple genres, usually Crime, Mystery and Suspense.  Crime films are easier to pull out because, as I explained in the Crime post, they are films in which the main character is a criminal.  It is a lot more difficult to draw a line between Crime films and Suspense films and you could easily take all of Mystery and make it a sub-section of Suspense films.  But I will try.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2001

Bring on the cave troll.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories (because that’s how many **** films there are) but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring  *
2. The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
3. Moulin Rouge  *
4. Mulholland Drive  **
5. Memento
6. Gosford Park
7. In the Bedroom  *
8. The Royal Tenenbaums
9. Vanilla Sky
10. Amores Perros
11. The Man Who Wasn’t There
12. The Others
13. Ghost World
14. Monster’s Ball
15. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
16. The Princess and the Warrior
17. Black Hawk Down
18. The Devil’s Backbone
19. Monsters Inc.
20. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 1986

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 10 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Hannah and Her Sisters  **
2. Platoon  *
3. A Room with a View  *
4. Stand by Me
5. Blue Velvet  *
6. Mona Lisa
7. My Beautiful Laundrette
8. Aliens
9. Decline of the American Empire
10. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 1980

The first black-and-white Nighthawk winner since 1966.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 10 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Raging Bull  *
2. Breaker Morant
3. The Elephant Man  *
4. The Empire Strikes Back
5. Ordinary People  **
6. Tess
7. Kagemusha
8. The Shining
9. Stardust Memories
10. Airplane!

Analysis:  The best Top 5 in six years and tied for 7th to this date.  The Top 10 (all **** films) is also the best since 1974, but is the 4th best to this date, behind only 1960, 1962 and 1974.  There are no other **** films in this year.  Melvin and Howard, a high ***.5, is my #11 and was a Consensus nominee.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Director (ranked #50 – 26)

Robert Altman (#33) on the set of Prairie Home Companion with his “standby director”, Paul Thomas Anderson (#28), who agreed to that role for insurance reasons. In between is some actress.

This is the penultimate ranked list of those directors who have been nominated for Best Director by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.  This is part 8 of the series, with one part still left to go.  As always, you can find the previous seven posts in this series by going here.  There is also an introduction here, which explains the scope of the project as well as my scoring system.  I have been focusing on finishing this series this year, both so that I go do the bi-annual update of the Top 100 Directors of All-Time and because I want to do it before another Oscar season and some more directors potentially end up needing to be ranked.

In a reversal of the last group, these are the more experienced directors.  With the exception of four Studio Era workhorses, the 25 directors in the last post had only averaged 7.76 films.  This time, we have seven directors (Lucas, Olivier, Coppola, Fosse, Malick, Mendes, Anderson) who have only directed a combined 39 films – an average of 5.57 (I’ve seen all but two of those – the two now out or about to be in theaters).  The other 18 directors have averaged 19.83 films – or if you cut out Lynch, Branagh and Leigh, you have 15 directors who have made 325 films (21.67 each), of which I have seen 308.  I have also seen 95.2% of these films – only missing more than one film by Renoir (4) and Capra (9).  And the only film I’m missing from both Truffaut and Malle are on TCM in the next month.  And this just about caps it for the less experienced directors.  The only director in the last post with fewer than 10 films to his credit is Tarantino.

The other demarcation point between this group and the final group is the number of great (****) films they have directed.  Of the final 25, only one has directed fewer than 5 great films – Francis Ford Coppola, at #25, and he’s got four.  Only four others have directed just five – Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles (both of whom have smaller amounts of total films), Clint Eastwood and Elia Kazan.  But how many directors have directed more than five great films and aren’t in the top 25?  Just five – all of whom are here: Stephen Frears (which is how he ranks this high), Steven Soderbergh, Pedro Almodóvar, Frank Capra and Francois Truffaut.  They all have six great films.  All sixteen directors who directed more than six great films are in the final group.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2001

Patterns form where none exist for John (Russell Crowe) and Alicia Nash (Jennifer Connelly) in A Beautiful Mind.

The 74th annual Academy Awards for the film year 2001.  The nominations were announced on February 12, 2002 and the awards were held on March 24, 2002.

Best Picture:  A Beautiful Mind

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Moulin Rouge!
• Gosford Park
• In the Bedroom

Most Surprising Omission:  Mulholland Dr.

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain

Best Eligible English-Language Film Not Nominated:  Mulholland Dr.

Rank (out of 84) Among Best Picture Years:  #6

 

The Year in Film: 2001

I’m a Lord of the Rings fanatic with a thing for Cate Blanchett. What were you expecting to see here?

My Top 20:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. Moulin Rouge
3. The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. Memento
6. Gosford Park
   
7. In the Bedroom
8. The Royal Tenenbaums
9. The Others
10. The Man Who Wasn’t There
11. Ghost World
12. Amores perros
13. Monster’s Ball
14. The Princess and the Warrior
15. A.I.  Artificial Intelligence
16. Vanilla Sky
17. Black Hawk Down
18. The Devil’s Backbone
19. Monsters Inc.
20. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone

 

The Year in Film: 1990

A nice family dinner in GoodFellas (1990) - never mind the guy dying in the trunk

My Top 20:

1. GoodFellas
2. Dances with Wolves
3. Miller’s Crossing
4. The Grifters
5. Presumed Innocent
6. Cinema Paradiso
7. The Hunt for Red October
8. Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams
9. May Fools
10. The Killer
11. Longtime Companion
12. Reversal of Fortune
13. Avalon
14. Jesus of Montreal
15. Edward Scissorhands
16. White Hunter, Black Heart
17. Total Recall
18. The Nasty Girl
19. Misery
20. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer