Regular readers from the Other Place might remember that the last week of each year was always devoted to a rambling reflection on the pictures that had preoccupied us over the previous 51 weeks. The abrupt departure that necessitated the launch of this blog means, however, that it isn't possible to revisit reviews posted elsewhere before the middle of October. Consequently, we shall take advantage of the fact that a fifth of the 21st century has already elapsed to look back at the Top 10 lists selected since 2000 and reveal the titles that have made the 2019 chart.
TOP 10 of 2000
1) The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
2) The Color of Paradise (Majid Majidi)
3) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel and Ethan Coen)
4) One Day in September (Kevin Macdonald)
5) Sunshine (István Szabó)
6) Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh)
7) Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson)
8) Wonderland (Michael Winterbottom)
9) Time Regained (Raúl Ruiz)
10) American Movie (Chris Smith)
TOP 10 of 2001
1) Eloge de l'Amour (Jean-Luc Godard)
2) Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson)
3) Sous le Sable (François Ozon)
4) Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
5) A Time for Drunken Horses (Bahman Ghobadi)
6) La Ville est Tranquille (Robert Guédiguian)
7) Code Unknown (Michael Haneke)
8) Last Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski)
9) Little Otik (Jan Švankmajer)
10) The Taste of Others (Agnès Jaoui)
TOP 10 of 2002
1) 10 (Abbas Kiarostami)
2) The Lady and the Duke (Eric Rohmer)
3) Secret Ballot (Babak Payami)
4) I'm Going Home (Manoel De Oliveira)
5) No Man's Land (Danis Tanovic)
6) Italian for Beginners (Lone Scherfig)
7) Laissez-Passer (Bertrand Tavernier)
8) All About Lily Chou Chou (Shunji Iwai)
9) Pauline and Paulette (Lieven Debrauwer)
10) Super 8 Stories (Emir Kusturica)
TOP 10 of 2003
1) Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov)
2) Good Bye, Lenin (Wolfgang Becker)
3) Être et Avoir (Nicolas Philibert)
4) The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki)
5) L'Homme du Train (Patrice Leconte)
6) Lilya 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson)
7) Dark Water (Hideo Nakata)
8) The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan)
9) Swimming Pool (François Ozon)
10) City of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund)
Top 10 of 2004
1) Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring (Kim Ki-duk)
2) The Story of the Weeping Camel (Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni)
3) The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
4) Red Lights (Cédric Kahn)
5) Confidences Trop Intimes (Patrice Leconte)
6) Rivers and Tides (Thomas Riedelsheimer)
7) Dogville (Lars von Trier)
8) Since Otar Left (Julie Bertucelli)
9) Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
10) Monsieur N (Antoine De Caunes)
Top 10 of 2005
1) Heimat 3 (Edgar Reitz)
2) The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov)
3) Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel)
4) The Lizard (Kamal Tabrizi)
5) Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll)
6) Mad Hot Ballroom (Marilyn Agrelo)
7) Tickets (Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami and Ken Loach)
8) Adam & Paul (Lenny Abrahamson)
9) A Common Thread (Éléonore Faucher)
10) Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène)
TOP 10 of 2006
1) Offside (Jafar Panahi)
2) Unconscious (Joaquín Oristrell)
3) The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
4) Junebug (Phil Morrison)
5) The US vs John Lennon (David Leaf)
6) This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick)
7) Ballets Russes (Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller)
8) Cockles and Muscles (Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau)
9) Stray Dogs (Marzieh Meshkini)
10) Hidden (Michael Haneke)
TOP 10 of 2007
1) Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran)
2) Two Days In Paris (Julie Delpy)
3) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
4) Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais)
5) Molière (Laurent Tirard)
6) The Singer (Xavier Giannoli)
7) Jesus Camp (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing)
8) A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
9) Les Chansons d'Amour (Christophe Honoré)
10) Not Here to Be Loved (Stéphane Brizé)
TOP 10 of 2008
1) Let's Talk About the Rain (Agnès Jaoui)
2) Couscous (Abdellatif Kechiche)
3) Quiet Chaos (Antonello Grimaldi)
4) Terror's Advocate (Barbet Schroeder)
5) Dean Spanley (Toa Fraser)
6) Young@Heart (Stephen Walker)
7) Garage (Lenny Abrahamson)
8) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
9) My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
10) Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)
TOP 10 of 2009
1) Séraphine (Martin Provost)
2) Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea)
3) Shirin (Abbas Kiarostami)
4) Mid-August Lunch (Gianni Di Gregorio)
5) In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin)
6) The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda)
7) sleep furiously (Gideon Koppel)
8) Rumba (Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon)
9) Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino)
10) Paris 36 (Christophe Barratier)
TOP 10 of 2010
1) City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan)
2) The Maid (Sebastián Silva)
3) The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)
4) Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
5) Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)
6) A Room and a Half (Andrei Khrzhanovsky)
7) The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa)
8) Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
9) Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)
10) The Happiest Girl in the World (Radu Jude)
TOP 10 of 2011
1) Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
2) Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier)
3) Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli)
4) The Portuguese Nun (Eugène Green)
5) A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
6) Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
7) Post Mortem (Pablo Larrain)
8) The Silence (Baran bo Odar)
9) Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
10) Love Like Poison (Katell Quillévéré)
TOP 10 of 2012
1) The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr)
2) Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
3) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
4) Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
5) Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
6) Silent Souls (Aleksei Fedorchenko)
7) Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán)
8) A Useful Life (Federico Veiroj)
9) Michael (Markus Schleinzer)
10) Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)
TOP 10 of 2013
1) The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino)
2) Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour)
3) The Stoker (Alexei Balabanov)
4) Gloria (Sebastián Lelio)
5) Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)
6) Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
7) Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
8) Blancanieves (Pablo Berger)
9) In the Fog (Sergei Loznitsa)
10) Muscle Shoals (Greg 'Freddy' Camalier)
TOP 10 of 2015
1) Home From Home (Edgar Reitz)
2) Taxi Tehran (Jafar Panahi)
3) A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson)
4) Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
5) The New Girlfriend (François Ozon)
6) Listen to Me Marlon (Stevan Riley)
7) Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
8) Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
9) Blind (Eski Vogt)
10) Black Coal, Thin Ice (Diao Yinan)
TOP 10 of 2016
1) The Son of Joseph (Eugène Green)
2) Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)
3) Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi)
4) The Blue Room (Mathieu Amalric)
5) Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
6) Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)
7) Francofonia (Aleksandr Sokurov)
8) Train to Busan ( Yeon Sang-ho)
9) Son of Saul (László Nemes)
10) Tharlo (Perna Tseden)
TOP 10 of 2017
1) The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
2) I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)
3) I Am Not Madame Bovary (Feng Xiaogang)
4) A Journey Through French Cinema (Bertrand Tavernier)
5) Manchester By the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
6) Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
7) Kedi (Ceyda Torun)
8) La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
9) By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
10) Lost in Paris (Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon)
TOP 10 of 2018
1) Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
2) Columbus (Kogonada)
3) 1945 (Ferenc Török)
4) The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
5) The Heiresses (Marcello Martinessi)
6) Faces Places (Agnès Varda)
7) Make Us Dream (Sam Blair)
8) Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
9) Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle)
10) The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
TOP 10 of 2019
1) Bait (Mark Jenkin)
2) La Flor (Mariano Llinas)
3) So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai)
4) Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke)
5) Happy As Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)
6) Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov)
7) Woman At War (Benedikt Erlingsson)
8) Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (Matt Pinder)
9) Varda By Agnès (Agnès Varda)
10) Monos (Alejandro Landes)
As always, there are a clutch of worthy near misses to mention. In no particular order, they include The Chambermaid (Lila Aviles), Transit (Christian Petzold), The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg), The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos), Capenaum (Nadine Labaki), Birds of Paradise (Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra), Donbass (Sergei Loznitsa), Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor), Border (Ali Abassi), Sunset (László Nemes), Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas), A Season in France (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun), Rojo (Benjamin Naishtat), One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang and Lynn Zhang), Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa), Chained For Life (Aaron Schimberg), Atlantics (Mati Diop), Amazing Grace (Alan Elliott and Sydney Pollack), Knives Out (Rian Johnson), The Biggest Little Farm (John Chester), The Kingmaker (Lauren Greenfield) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan).
The year's guilty pleasures have to be A Minuscule Adventure (Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud) and Little Monsters (Abe Forsythe), while the revival of 2019 has to be Gordon Quinn and Jerry Temaner Inquiring Nuns (1968). As for the worst film, there are more contenders than there ought be.