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The best films of the 1940s. This was a decade in cinema defined by one massive, incontrovertible event: World War II. There was simply no denying it. The latter years of the war sent shockwaves through cinema all around the world, from Golden Age Hollywood to decimated Italy and Japan. The US responded by turning out some of its most astonishingly dark, socially trenchant films, finding notes of despair and yearning in genres as disparate as the musical and the war film, while establishing perhaps the decade’s defining epoch, adopted and adapted from the Germans and the French: film noir. Europe, meanwhile, saw the beginnings of some of its all-time most influential movements, namely Italian neorealism, which has ever since impressed its indelible mark on world cinema. It was a tough decade, one scarred by unfathomable political, social, and economic upheaval. And as always, the movies were there to reflect it.
And the best of the best are:
01. Bicycle Thieves 1948
02. Citizen Kane 1941
03. Late Spring 1949
04. To Be or Not to Be 1942
05. Double Indemnity 1944
06. Oliver Twist 1948
07. Casablanca 1943
08. Shoeshine 1947
09. The Third Man 1949
10. It's a Wonderful Life 1946
These are just as good:
The Letter, 1940
The Philadelphia Story, 1940
The Lady Eve, 1941
Sullivan's Travels, 1941
Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942
Day of Wrath, 1943
Meet Me in St. Louis, 1944
Cover Girl, 1944
The Children Are Watching Us, 1944
Scarlet Street, 1945
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945
Paisan, 1946
Notorious, 1946
Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947
The Lady from Shanghai, 1948
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948
Adam's Rib, 1949
White Heat, 1949
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The best films of the 1990s. The decade I was born in, the decade I grew up with - even if the films on this list aren't exactingly the ones I was watching then. All in all, a fantastic 10 years for movies.
01. Schindler's List 1993
02. Goodfellas 1990
03. Howards End 1992
04. The English Patient 1996
05. Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red 1993/1994
06. The Long Day Closes 1992
07. Magnolia 1999
08. Pulp Fiction 1994
09. Fargo 1996
10. Benny's Video 1992
My brilliant runners-up:
Close-Up, 1990
Dances with Wolves, 1990
Beauty and the Beast, 1991
JFK, 1991
Unforgiven, 1992
What's Eating Gilbert Grape, 1993
The Lion King, 1994
Hoop Dreams, 1994
Bullets Over Broadway, 1994
Shine, 1996
Titanic, 1997
L.A. Confidential, 1997
Deconstructing Harry, 1997
Taste of Cherry, 1997
Life is Beautiful, 1998
Saving Private Ryan, 1998
The Thin Red Line, 1998
The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1999
Ratcatcher, 1999
American Beauty, 1999
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Growing up and becoming a hardcore, obsessive cinephile in the 00s, there is naturally no decade where I've seen as many films from. Because of this, making a Top 10 list of its absolute best offerings was excruciatingly difficult: my list could just as easily include any of the runners-up I mention aftewards and it would be equally as satisfying, equally as rich and worthy. So while my Top 10 is, well, a Top 10, feel free to look at this list as more of a Top 34. And realize that if I were truly to list all of my favorites from the last decade, this would never end.
01. THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY 2001-2003
02. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2007
03. No Country for Old Men 2007
04. Lost in Translation 2003
05. There Will Be Blood 2007
06. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004
07. Brokeback Mountain 2005
08. A Serious Man 2009
09. Pan's Labyrinth 2006
10. Thumbsucker 2005
My brilliant runners-up:
Billy Elliot, 2000
Traffic, 2000
The Gleaners and I, 2000
Mulholland Drive, 2001
Memento, 2001
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, 2001
The Hours, 2002
Gangs of New York, 2002
Adaptation., 2002
Blissfully Yours, 2002
Monster, 2003
The Return, 2003
Finding Nemo, 2003
The Aviator, 2004
King Kong, 2005
Munich, 2005
Caché, 2005
Children of Men, 2006
Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006
Little Miss Sunshine, 2006
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007
Milk, 2008
WALL-E, 2008
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008
Let the Right One In, 2008
Flight of the Red Balloon, 2008
A Single Man, 2009
Avatar, 2009