Your Favorite Films From Every Year Since You Were Born (55, conversation)

[MadManofBethesda]

Saw this on another website forum and thought it'd be fun for the Retirement Forum. (Especially since people keep wanting to list older movies on katharsis's post-2000 thread.)

List your favorite film of every year since the year you were born!
Your favorite is not necessarily the one you think is best...

List ONLY ONE film per year. This is harder than it looks.

While compiling my list, I was surprised at how many times I went with personal favorites over the more obvious "great" films of the year...

My list:

1956 - - - Forbidden Planet
1957 - - - The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 - - - A Night to Remember
1959 - - - Operation Petticoat
1960 - - - The Apartment
1961 - - - The Hustler
1962 - - - The Music Man
1963 - - - The Great Escape
1964 - - - My Fair Lady
1965 - - - Cat Ballou
1966 - - - A Man For All Seasons
1967 - - - Barefoot in the Park
1968 - - - Oliver!
1969 - - - Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
1970 - - - Patton
1971 - - - Fiddler on the Roof
1972 - - - The Godfather
1973 - - - The Sting
1974 - - - Young Frankenstein
1975 - - - The Man Who Would Be King
1976 - - - All The President's Men
1977 - - - Annie Hall
1978 - - - Animal House
1979 - - - All That Jazz
1980 - - - Coal Miner's Daughter
1981 - - - Excalibur
1982 - - - My Favorite Year
1983 - - - The Big Chill
1984 - - - Amadeus
1985 - - - Lost in America
1986 - - - Hannah and Her Sisters
1987 - - - Broadcast News
1988 - - - Die Hard
1989 - - - When Harry Met Sally
1990 - - - Miller's Crossing
1991 - - - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
1992 - - - Reservoir Dogs
1993 - - - Dave*
1994 - - - Pulp Fiction
1995 - - - The Usual Suspects
1996 - - - Fargo
1997 - - - L.A. Confidential
1998 - - - Rounders
1999 - - - Galaxy Quest
2000 - - - Almost Famous
2001 - - - A Knight's Tale
2002 - - - Chicago
2003 - - - Kill Bill Vol. 1
2004 - - - Sideways
2005 - - - Good Night, and Good Luck
2006 - - - The Last King of Scotland
2007 - - - Charlie Wilson's War
2008 - - - Bottle Shock
2009 - - - Pirate Radio
2010 - - - True Grit
2011 - - - Midnight in Paris
2012 - - - Les Miserables
2013 - - - Pacific Rim
2014 - - - The Imitation Game
2015 - - - Amy
2016 - - - La La Land
2017 - - - Molly's Game
2018 - - - Crazy Rich Asians
2019 - - - Avengers: Endgame

[msgsing]

Don’t have time today to list every year. 2004 Sideways. My daughter and I enjoyed and watched this film many times. So we decided to take a Sideways vacation. We left San Diego from the apartment building here where the film began and then took the freeway ramp up 5 North shown in the film and drove up to wine country.

Stayed at all the shoot locales. Spent a night at the hotel where the main characters stayed. Visited all the restaurants and wineries seen in the film. And of course there was a lot of wine and conversation about the locales and the various actors involved in this film. Enjoyable.

[NYgal1542]

The one movie I haven't seen mentioned yet is The Hasty Heart (1949). Saw it with my parents.

"On the last day of World War II, Scottish soldier Lachlan MacLachlan (Richard Todd) is shot in the lower back and needs to be treated at the local medical unit in Burma before he can return home. His stay is lengthened, however, and when his nurse (Patricia Neal) asks why, she learns that his wound is fatal. With the help of an American patient (Ronald Reagan), the staff and other patients at the hospital try to make the Scot's final days happy. But things get ugly when he learns the truth."

[katharsis]

1953 Calamity Jane
1954 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
1955 Lady and the Tramp (animated)
1956 The Bad Seed
1957 12 Angry Men
1958 The Blob
1959 Some Like It Hot
1960 Exodus
1961 West Side Story
1962 To Kill a Mockingbird
1963 40 Pounds of Trouble, Parent Trap, McLintock
1964 Seven Days in May
1965 Halleleujah Trail
1966 Good, Bad and Ugly
1967 Taming of the Shrew
1968 Romeo and Juliet
1969 Paint Your Wagon
1970 M*A*S*H
1971 Fiddler on the Roof
1972 The Cowboys
1973 Executive Action
1974 Godfather Part II
1975 Jaws
1976 Swashbuckler
1977 The Deep
1978 Grease
1979 Black Stallion
1980 Nine to Five
1981 On Golden Pond
1982 Tootsie
1983 Christmas Story, Mr. Mom
1984 Romancing the Stone
1985 Witness
1986 Top Gun
1987 Baby Boom
1988 Die Hard
1989 Indiana Jones and Last Crusade
1990 Hunt for Red October
1991 City Slickers
1992 Cutting Edge
1993 The Fugitive, Dave
1994 Shawshank Redemption
1995 While You Were Sleeping, Englishman Who Went Up A Hill
1996 Restoration
1997 Titanic
1998 You've Got Mail
1999 October Sky, Cider House Rules, Notting Hill
2000 Family Man, Frequency, Almost Famous
2001 Knight's Tale, K-Pax
2002 Importance of Being Earnest
2003 Master and Commander
2004 Shall We Dance?, The Notebook
2005 Dear Frankie, Fever Pitch, Greatest Game Ever Played
2006 A Good Year, The Holiday
2007 Music and Lyrics, 3:10 to Yuma
2008 Mamma Mia
2009 Knowing, Gran Torino
2010 Letters to Juliet
2011 Ides of March
2012 Hunger Games
2013 About Time
2014 Lucy
2015 Far from the Madding Crowd
2016 London Has Fallen
2017 Greatest Showman
2018 A Star is Born
2019 Angel Has Fallen (so far, but I still want to see "Yesterday")

The titles in bold are my actual favorites. Also, there were well over 100 movies that I liked better than the ones I actually listed because of the "year restraint". I only put multiple listings when I absolutely could not make a decision as to my favorite for that year.

P.S. I also did not include TV movies, many of which I liked much better than the many of the theatrical movies above. Examples: "One Special Night", "Pride and Prejudice" (Firth-Ehle version), "Sense and Sensibility" (BBC), etc., etc., etc.

[Hefe]

OK.... I'm a cinephile who's mildly obsessive & makes lists constantly, so you got me on this. I just didn't realize how old I was until I had to account for every single year of my life.
These are my favorites, not "The Best" movie each year.


1952: Singing in the Rain
1953: The Wages of Fear
1954: La Strada
1955: The Ladykillers
1956: The Searchers
1957: Bridge on the River Kwai / Paths of Glory (Tie)
1958: Vertigo
1959: Some Like It Hot / North by Northwest
1960: Tunes of Glory
1961: A Taste of Honey
1962: Jules & Jim
1963: 8 1/2
1964: Dr Strangelove
1965: The Naked Prey
1966: Morgan!
1967: Point Blank
1968: 2001
1969: The Wild Bunch
1970: Five Easy Pieces
1971: Get Carter / French Connection
1972: The Godfather / Aguirre, Wrath of God
1973: Amacord
1974: Godfather II
1975: Dog Day Afternoon
1976: Network
1977: Annie Hall
1978: The Last Waltz ( For a plotted film: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)
1979: Saint Jack
1980: Airplane!
1981: Reds
1982: The Year of Living Dangerously / Fitzcarraldo
1983: Local Hero
1984: This is Spinal Tap / Blood Simple
1985: Runaway Train
1986: Hannah & Her Sisters
1987: Full Metal Jacket
1988: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1989: Sea of Love
1990: The Grifters
1991: Silence of the Lambs
1992: Glengarry Glen Ross
1993: Jurassic Park
1994: Pulp Fiction
1995: The Usual Suspects
1996: Fargo
1997: The Apostle
1998: The Big Lebowski
1999: Office Space
2000: O Brother Where Art Thou?
2001: Mulholland Drive
2002: The Bourne Identity
2003: A Mighty Wind
2004: Sideways
2005: Syriana
2006: Children of Men
2007: Once
2008: In Bruges
2009: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy (Swedish)
2010: Biutiful
2011: The Descendants
2012: The Master
2013: Inside Llewyn Davis
2014: In Order of Disappearance
2015: The Big Short
2016: The Founder
2017: The Big Sick
2018: Arctic


Whew!
The last 4-5 years I haven't seen too many yet so I just picked one I enjoyed the most.

[MadManofBethesda]

Katharsis & Hefe: Excellent lists! You've both picked some great films that are some of my favorites as well. A few of them were my second choice for the years listed.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

OMG, how can nobody have listed Mary Poppins, the Sound of Music, the Music Man, Oklahoma, the Wizard of Oz, or so many other musicals yet, oh gosh like Guys and Dolls?

Gone with the Wind

So many Fred Astair movies. Can't think of them all or the years, but I was born in the mid 1950's and grew up with so many great musicals. They were my favorites growing up.

A more modern one I loved was Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, too.

Don't know all the years.

[MadManofBethesda]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

OMG, how can nobody have listed Mary Poppins, the Sound of Music, the Music Man, Oklahoma, the Wizard of Oz, or so many other musicals yet, oh gosh like Guys and Dolls?

Gone with the Wind

So many Fred Astair movies. Can't think of them all or the years, but I was born in the mid 1950's and grew up with so many great musicals. They were my favorites growing up.

A more modern one I loved was Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, too.

Don't know all the years.

Well for one thing, Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz were the same year (1939), so you'd have to make a choice. Secondly, no one who's posted yet was even born in 1939, so neither are even eligible to be included by them.

As for musicals, I included quite a few in my list including The Music Man, which you must have overlooked. One of the other musicals I listed was My Fair Lady for 1964, which is the same year that Mary Poppins came out, so if you like both musicals, you have to choose between the two. And while I love Guys and Dolls as you do, it came out in 1955, the year before I was born, so it was ineligible for my list.

See, it's a lot harder than you think to compose a list of favorite movies when you can only choose one for each year. Try it yourself and see.

[Michael Way]

For some years, I couldn't pin it down to one absolute favorite so I gave my two favorites.

1954: Them
1955: It Came from Beneath the Sea
1956: Forbidden Planet; The Ten Commandments
1957: The Monolith Monsters
1958: South Pacific: The Big Country
1959: Ben Hur
1960: The Time Machine
1961: King of Kings
1962: Hatari
1963: Donovan's Reef; The Birds
1964: A Fistful of Dollars
1965: The Greatest Story Ever Told
1966: One Million Years B.C.
1967: Don't Make Waves
1968: The Green Berets
1969: True Grit
1970: Rio Lobo
1971: Summer of 42
1972: Jeremiah Johnson
1973: The Exorcist
1974: Death Wish
1975: Rooster Cogburn
1976: Midway
1977: The Goodbye Girl
1978: Same Time Next Year
1979: Star Trek: THE Motion Picture
1980: Somewhere in Time
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
1983: Never Say Never Again
1984: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
1985: Pale Rider
1986: Crocodile Dundee
1987: Predator
1988: Crocodile Dundee II
1989: Field of Dreams
1990: Tremors
1991: Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country
1992: Unforgiven: Last of the Mohicans
1993: Jurassic Park
1994: Stargate
1995: The Bridges of Madison County
1996: Twister
1997: Contact
1998: Armageddon; The Mask of Zorro
1999: The World is Not Enough
2000: Cast Away
2001: ---
2002: ---
2003: The Last Samuri
2004: ---
2005: Batman Begins
2006: Rocky Balboa
2007: ---
2008: Iron Man; Outlander
2009: Avatar
2010: ---
2011: Captain America: The First Avenger
2012: The Avengers
2013: Man of Steel
2014: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2015: The Martian
2016 - 2019 I haven't yet seen any movie from those years.

Years with a --- I couldn't come up with any movie that I really liked.

[brava4]

Shame!!! Where is Rocky??? Yo, Adrian, I did it!! Multiple Oscar winner, true rages to riches story.