My Top Movies Of Each Decade

 

I enjoy bringing to attention and recommending great accomplishments – and here I’d like to do so with movies. These are some of my favourites over the past decades; listed alphabetically, and with the director alongside. Hope you enjoy.

1930s

All Quiet On The Western Front – Lewis Milestone

The Bride of Frankenstein – James Whale

Bringing Up Baby – Howard Hawks

Gone With The Wind – Victor Fleming

La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir

It Happened One Night – Frank Capra

M – Fritz Lang

Mr Smith Goes To Washington – Frank Capra

Ninotchka - Ernst Lubitsch

Swing Time – George Stevens

The 39 Steps – Alfred Hitchcock

The Wizard of Oz – Mervyn Leroy, King Vidor, Victor Fleming

Wuthering Heights – William Wyler

1940s

The Bicycle Thief - Vittorio De Sica

Casablanca - Michael Curtiz

Citizen Kane - Orson Welles

Les Enfants Du Paradis (Children of Paradise) - Marcel Carné

The Grapes of Wrath - John Ford

Great Expectations - David Lean

It's a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra

A Matter of Life and Death - Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Miracle on 34th Street - George Seaton

Orpheus - Jean Cocteau

Out of the Past - Jacques Tourneur

The Philadelphia Story - George Cukor

Rebecca - Alfred Hitchcock

The Third Man - Carol Reed

1950s

All About Eve - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The 400 Blows - François Truffaut

High Noon - Fred Zinnemann

Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton

Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa

Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa

Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen

The Seventh Seal – Ingmar Bergman

Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder

Strangers on a Train – Alfred Hitchcock

Sunset Boulevard - Billy Wilder

Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu

Twelve Angry Men - Sidney Lumet

 

1960s

L’Avenntura - Michelangelo Antonioni

A Bout De Souffle - Jean-Luc Godard

Dr. Strangelove – Stanley Kunbrick

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – Sergio Leone

Inherit The Wind – Staley Kramer

In The Heat Of The Night - Norman Jewison

Lawrence of Arabia – David Lean

Psycho – Alfred Hitchcock

2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick

West Side Story – Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins

Z - Costa-Gavras

1970s

All The President's Men - Alan J. Pakula

Annie Hall – Woody Allen

Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola

Cabaret – Bob Fosse

Chinatown – Roman Polanski

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Luis Bunuel

The Exorcist - William Friedkin

Five Easy Pieces - Bob Rafelson

The Godfather & The Godfather Part II – Francis Ford Coppola

The Goodbye Girl - Herbert Ross

Jaws – Steven Spielberg

Kramer vs. Kramer - Robert Benton

Manhattan - Woody Allen

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest - Milos Forman

The Out-of-Towners – Arthur Hiller

Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese

 

1980s

Airplane - David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams

After Hours – Martin Scorsese

Amadeus – Milos Forman

Back To The Future Trilogy – Robert Zemeckis

Cinema Paradiso - Giuseppe Tornatore

Midnight Run – Martin Brest

Once Upon A Time in America – Sergio Leone

Raging Bull – Martin Scorsese

Raiders of the Lost Ark - Steven Spielberg

Ran - Akira Kurosawa

The Shining – Stanley Kubrick

 

1990s

American Beauty - Sam Mendes

Before Sunrise – Richard Linklater

The Bridges of Madison County - Clint Eastwood

The End of the Affair - Neil Jordan

Fight Club – David Fincher

Forrest Gump - Robert Zemeckis

Glengarry Glen Ross - James Foley

Goodfellas – Martin Scorsese

Groundhog Day - Harold Ramis

Magnolia - Paul Thomas Anderson

Naked - Mike Leigh

Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino

Secrets and Lies – Mike Leigh

The Silence of the Lambs – Jonathan Demme

Six Degrees of Separation - Fred Schepisi

 

2000-2021

About Schmidt – Alexander Payne

Adaptation – Spike Jonze

Barney’s Version – Richard J. Lewis

Before Sunset - Richard Linklater

Closer - Mike Nichols

The Departed – Martin Scorsese

The Descendants – Alexander Payne

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Michael Gondry

Ex Machina - Alex Garland

Happiness - Todd Solondz

I'm Thinking of Ending Things – Charlie Kaufman

Little Miss Sunshine - Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Lost in Translation – Sofia Coppola

Memento - Christopher Nolan

Million Dollar Baby – Clint Eastwood

Mulholland Drive – David Lynch

1917 - Sam Mendes

No County For Old Men – Coen Brothers

Once - John Carney

The Pledge - Sean Penn

Sideways - Alexander Payne

The Social Network – David Fincher

Stranger Than Fiction - Marc Forster

21 Grams - Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Tyrannosaur - Paddy Considine

 

Films I need to watch that I’ve heard are excellent: There Will Be Blood and Synecdoche, New York