1994 Top Ten List

Exotica (Atom Egoyan)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski)

Cold Water (Olivier Assayas)

Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)

Wild Reeds (André Téchiné)

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)

U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis)

Ed Wood (Tim Burton)

A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang)

Additional 1994 Films By Rating

The Last Seduction (John Dahl)

River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt)

Crumb (Terry Zwigoff)

Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen)

The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen)

The Kingdom (Lars von Trier & Morten Arnfred)

Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle)

Hoop Dreams (Steve James)

Vive L'Amour (Tsai Ming-liang)

Fresh (Boaz Yakin)

Barcelona (Whit Stillman)

Quiz Show (Robert Redford)

Speed (Jan de Bont)

Good Old Daze (Cédric Klapisch)

Amateur (Hal Hartley)

The Madness of King George (Nicholas Hytner)

Ashes of Time (Wong Kar-wai)

The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)

Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the '60s in Brussels (Chantal Akerman)

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (Alan Rudolph)

Crooklyn (Spike Lee)

I Like It Like That (Darnell Martin)

Cobb (Ron Shelton)

London (Patrick Keiller)

Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov)

The Shadow (Russell Mulcahy)

Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau)

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (Michael Haneke)

Blue Sky (Tony Richardson)

The Mask (Chuck Russell)

Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami)

The Professional (Luc Besson)

Stargate (Roland Emmerich)

Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle)

In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter)

White (Krzysztof Kieslowski)

The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (Les Blank)

Interview With the Vampire (Neil Jordan)

Clifford (Paul Flaherty)

True Lies (James Cameron)

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Wes Craven)

Cemetery Man (Michele Soavi)

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.

Ratings are on a needlessly precise 100-point scale.

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.)

Seen but currently unrated (and not presumptively among my top 10): Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Shadyac); The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliott); Anna (Mikhalkov); Backbeat (Softley); Bandit Queen (Kapur); Before the Rain (Manchevski); Being Human (Forsyth); Clear and Present Danger (Noyce); Clerks (Smith); The Client (Schumacher); Colonel Chabert (Angelo); Country Life (Blakemore); The Cow (Kachyna); The Crow (Proyas); The Day the Sun Turned Cold (Yim); The Days (Wang); Death and the Maiden (Polanski); Disclosure (Levinson); Double Happiness (Shum); Dumb & Dumber (Farrelly); Eat Drink Man Woman (Lee); Ermo (Zhou); Farinelli (Corbiau); Faust (Švankmajer); Fear of a Black Hat (Cundieff); Forrest Gump (Zemeckis); Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell); Fun (Zielinski); The Getaway (Donaldson); The Glass Shield (Burnett); Go Fish (Troche); A Great Day in Harlem (Bach); Grosse fatigue (Blanc); I'll Do Anything (Brooks); It Could Happen to You (Bergman); Jimmy Hollywood (Levinson); JLG/JLG (Godard); La Séparation (Vincent); Ladybird Ladybird (Loach); Lamerica (Amelio); The Last Good Time (Balaban); Le Franc (Diop Mambéty); The Legend of Drunken Master (Lau); The Lion King (Allers & Minkoff); Lisbon Story (Wenders); Little Odessa (Gray); Little Women (Armstrong); A Man of No Importance (Krishnamma); Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Branagh); Maverick (Donner); Mina Tannenbaum (Dugowson); The Monster (Benigni); The Most Terrible Time in My Life (Hayashi); Muriel's Wedding (Hogan); Mute Witness (Waller); The Mystery of Rampo (Okuyama); Nadja (Almereyda); Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (Segal); Natural Born Killers (Stone); Nell (Apted); The New Age (Tolkin); The New Legend of Shaolin (Wong & Yuen); Nobody Loves Me (Dörrie); Nobody's Fool (Benton); Oleanna (Mamet); Once Were Warriors (Tamahori); Only the Brave (Kokkinos); The Paper (Howard); Picture Bride (Hatta); The Postman (Radford); Priest (Bird); Princess Caraboo (Austin); Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills (Mora); Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter) (Altman); Reality Bites (Stiller); Rhythm Thief (Harrison); The River Wild (Hanson); The Road to Wellville (Parker); Roadracers (Rodriguez); The Rook (Palatnik); Sátántangó (Tarr); The Secret of Roan Inish (Sayles); Serial Mom (Waters); The Sexual Life of the Belgians: 1950–1978 (Bucquoy); Shades of Fear (Kidron); The Silences of the Palace (Tlatli); Spanking the Monkey (Russell); The Specialist (Llosa); Strawberry and Chocolate (Gutiérrez Alea & Carlos Tabio); The Sum of Us (Dowling & Burton); Swimming With Sharks (Huang); That's Entertainment! III (Friedgen & Sheridan); Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (Martin); To Live (Zhang); Tom & Viv (Gilbert); What Happened Was... (Noonan); Widows' Peak (Irvin); Wing Chun (Yuen); Wolf (Nichols); The Wooden Man's Bride (Huang); Woyzeck (Szász)

As yet unseen: Joan the Maid (Rivette); Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (Kaurismäki); An Unforgettable Summer (Pintilie)

I occasionally write reviews of older movies, but it happens too infrequently to file them by year.