For archival purposes, I file everything by the year it had its world premiere. Many of these films will have been commercially released in the U.S. a year or two later, so my lists won’t always match up with other folks’ lists.
Films I haven’t yet rated on that scale are marked with if I currently think they belong in my top ten. These films are subject to being shifted around or yanked altogether at any moment, after I revisit them and they get a numeral. (Lists from prior to about 1988 are especially suspect, as I compiled them long ago from memories that were in many cases already pretty dusty.) If a film isn’t currently in my top ten, and I haven’t yet rated it, you’ll find it under Notable Omissions below or you won’t find it at all. There are a whole lot of the latter — if you’re wondering whether or not I’ve seen the masterpiece you can’t believe I omitted, check my master list.
Bumped from Top 10:Mickey One (Arthur Penn)
Notable Omissions:Cat Ballou
(Silverstein); Darling (Schlesinger); Fist in His Pocket
(Bellochio); Juliet of the Spirits (Fellini); Le Bonheur
(Varda); The Round-Up (Jancsó); The Shop on Main
Street (Kadár & Klos); The Sound of Music (Wise);
Viva Maria! (Malle)
As yet unseen:Alphaville (Godard);
The Family Jewels (Lewis); The Great Race (Edwards);
Help! (Lester); A High Wind in Jamaica (Mackendrick);
The Knack, and How to Get It (Lester); The Koumiko Mystery
(Marker); Mirage (Dmytryk); Tokyo Olympiad
(Ichikawa); The War Game (Watkins)
I occasionally write reviews of older movies, but it happens too infrequently to file them by year.