Considering 30 years of #1 movies

I may be done reflecting on the movies of 2025 on this blog, but I'm not done reflecting on my #1s throughout history.

That's because Together just became the 30th #1 I've ever given out.

That's right, I started out with Al Pacino's Looking for Richard way back in 1996, and that brings us a full three decades later to my #1 of 2025. 

I already did a celebration of this milestone with this gargantuan project undertaken last year. I said in that post that I maybe should have waited until around now to do this, but that the idea had lit a fire under me and I couldn't wait.

I got this current idea a few months later, and I did wait until now on this one, because I needed that 30th to make it work. 

So the idea here is to reflect on the choices I've made with past #1s, and see what the world has thought of those choices with the benefit of hindsight.

When you are selecting a #1 movie, you only know what people think of it in that exact moment, the first year of its existence as a piece of art. And in some cases, you choose something obscure, so you don't even really know what most people think of it because they haven't seen it yet -- and without your recommendation, may never see it.

But it occurred to me that any time any person chooses a #1 movie, you can later look back on it as one of the following three things:

1) A stone-cold classic that everyone thinks is one of the greats of its era;

2) A weird personal favorite that may not be for everybody but that you still staunchly defend, or

3) A movie that you may still like well enough, but that has not aged particularly well in the sphere of public opinion.

After 30 years of doing this, I decided that I'm going to trisect my past #1s so that I have ten from each category.

Obviously this will be imperfect. There are some movies that will be between two categories. I may feel like I have 17 or 18 stone-cold classics in my past #1s, but there's only room for ten. (I don't; this is just hypothetical.) A movie I classify as "weird" may not be weird in any traditional sense of its narrative or execution.

But I do think these three categories more or less encapsulate the range of potential outcomes for a movie to settle in over time, assuming you don't turn on a previous #1 so much that you actually dislike it. They can all be abbreviated to a three-word phrase: "stone-cold classics," "weird defensible favorites" and "haven't aged well." When I was jotting them down on the back of a piece of paper on the train, I listed these as SCC, WDF and HAW. 

This is a necessarily reductive exercise, but let me state a few more caveats just to address a few other considerations:

1) Some of these movies haven't had a chance to age at all, especially the one I crowned my favorite only a week ago. So in some cases I will have to be projecting their eventual reputation based on what I believe it is now.

2) This is not listed in order of my own favorites. I already did that a few years ago in this post. This is an imagined order based on the opinion of a disinterested outsider, who is only analyzing the films on their reputation and not on their own personal opinions. 

3) I'm going to list them in an order that reflects the extent to which they conform to the tier they are in, and how close they are to the tier above or below them. So my top-ranked "stone-cold classic" will be the one that the most people think is the stoniest, coldest classic. And so on. 

Hey, and unlike some of my other posts where I wax poetic about these movies for hundreds of words, I'm going to keep it brief on each. You've got stuff to do today. 

Also there are a few films whose release year is ambiguous -- released in its country of origin a different year from when it was my #1 -- but to keep things less confusing here, I'm list the year it was my #1. 

Let's not waste any more time on rules. I think you understand what this post is. So let's get into it.

The "stone-cold classic" tier

1) There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson) - We may have near universal consensus that Anderson's One Battle After Another is the best film of 2025, but TWBB is usually considered one of the best movies, if not the best movie, of the entire 21st century. It's hard to compete with that.

2) Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho) - If you wanted a consensus runner-up for that same time period, you'd have a hard time beating Parasite, which also unifies cinephiles in their affection -- and, like One Battle After Another, is also incredibly fun. 

3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) - Even if my own last viewing of this underwhelmed me just a little bit, this is consistently a crazy performer in all the "best of the century" lists, and basically you never hear anybody who says it didn't work for them.

4) Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron) - I felt a bit out on the limb in my affection for this at the time, but everyone -- and I mean everyone -- has since joined me on that limb, such that we had to convert it from a limb, which was breaking under our collective weight, into a steel fortress.

5) Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola) - Most people acknowledge that Coppola tapped into a magical vibe of unsurpassed staying power in this movie about two jet-lagged strangers connecting in Tokyo, proving that romance was not dead and did not have to be sappy either. 

6) Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter) - Consistently appears at or near the top of Pixar's best lists, although it usually has to fight films I like a lot less, like Wall-E and Ratatouille. 

7) A Separation (2011, Asgar Farhadi) - It may not be a huge performer in the zeitgeist, because your average cinephile doesn't always see Iranian films, but the film's impeccable critical reputation easily earns it a spot in this tier. 

8) Run Lola Run (1999, Tom Tykwer) - Again, maybe a German-language film isn't getting constantly rewatched, but the general respect for this film is quite high. (Plus I actually listed as my #1 when I ranked all 26 a few years ago, though I'm not sure if I would still do that today.)

9) Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze) - I know there is a contingent out there who isn't as sold on this film, but its sheer structural complexity and the breadth of its ambition easily earn it a spot in the top tier -- or maybe not easily since it's only #9. 

10) Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade) - Probably the least seen film in the top tier, in part because of its great length, Erdmann has huge respect in cinephile circles and was also included at #59 in the recent New York Times list that circulated about the best 100 movies of the 21st century.

The "weird defensible favorites" tier

11) First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader) - This film has some detractors, but those who love it really love it, such that it has nearly graduated to the "stone-cold classic" tier. I've also seen it four times in the only 7+ years of its existence, which isn't actually relevant to this discussion. 

12) The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat) - This ranking is based on the fact that I can see this movie aging into a classic. I think The Substance, already liked quite a bit by some, will gain in popularity -- at least as a cult film if nothing more -- when some people give it a second viewing.

13) A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery) - I don't know if Lowery's film has really seen its profile rise since it first came out, but the movie continues to earn points, and I would assume ardent fans, based on its truly individual concept seen out to unexpectedly poignant ends.

14) Beyond the Hills (2013, Cristian Mungiu) - Probably among the least seen in this whole list, Beyond the Hills is certainly beloved by those who have seen it -- but its low profile will always keep it out of the top tier. 

15) 127 Hours (2010, Danny Boyle) - If some of the shine has been lost from this, it's because James Franco is the star, not because it's anything less than unimpeachable as a movie, that shows off all of Boyle's strengths and none of his weaknesses. 

16) Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) - Again another film that does not necessarily come up a lot in cinephile discussions, but one that remains an engaging noodle fryer, even after there were a lot more movies that came out and tried to do what Moon does so effortlessly. 

17) The Wrestler (2008, Darren Aronofsky) - Is it just me or is there a bit of Aronofsky backlash out there? If so, I suspect this one gets caught up in it, a movie that people might only remember so much now because of Mickey Rourke's great comeback performance. But I can still strongly defend this one, so it goes in the middle of this tier.

18) Happiness (1998, Todd Solondz) - This one might divide people by the ick factor of, well, several things about it, but this used to be a really highly thought of film in a different era of independent cinema, and seems easily to be Solondz' best. Can't drop down to the low tier because of that lingering respect.

19) I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - The dislike for this one is strong in some quarters, and in other quarters it is the recipient of very high praise. That puts it near the bottom of this tier, but still a movie that I think is doing incredibly thoughtful and provocative things. In any case, you're never going to be embarrassed to say you love it.

20) Our Friend (2021, Gabriela Cowperthwaite) - The critical community is never going to come together to embrace, or even see, this little-seen and unassuming movie about a family going through cancer and their friend who helps get them through it. And I'm never going to not cry during it, so it will remain always at the end of this tier in my heart.

The "hasn't aged well" tier

21) Titanic (1997, James Cameron) - I like Titanic better than several of the films in each of the above two groups, as it remains one of my top ten #1 movies overall. But I understand this is not a serious critical opinion, and the most common way to think of this movie, critically, is to be embarrassed that we showered such praise on it. So it is, regrettably, in this tier, but at least it is the captain of the tier. (I may have also kept it out of the "weird favorite" tier because it seems funny to call Titanic "weird." The only other option is a stone-cold classic, and though I may see it that way, I don't think others do.)

22) Skinamarink (2023, Kyle Edward Ball) - Although this would certainly qualify as a "weird favorite," it's landing just outside that tier due to the fact that some people are so bored that they can't even get through it when they try to watch it. They just didn't watch it long enough to discover it's one of the most chilling movies they've seen this century. 

23) Hamlet (2000, Michael Almereyda) - For the first of two films involving Shakespeare in this tier, I don't think anyone who has seen this adaptation thinks ill of it, unless they object to the cheekiness of the Blockbuster video "to be or not to be" speech. But when I most recently rewatched it, I definitely did not feel the original draw at the same strength.

24) Together (2025, Michael Shanks) - I wanted to rank this a little closer to the next tier, but based only on the reactions I got to this being my #1 of 2025 -- almost no one even gave it mid-level praise -- I suspect that I am going to stay out on the limb on this one far into the future. 

25) Hustle & Flow (2005, Craig Brewer) - This was a very cool pick in 2005, but it has lost a lot of its luster since then. It's not just that subsequent viewings haven't been as good for me, it's that they've revealed there are some actually bad moments of acting in the film -- and also that people aren't really talking about this movie anymore. 

26) Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) - I remember how much my head was spun by this the first two times I saw it, and how surprised everyone was that I had selected it as my #1. My opinion gradually started to gravitate toward theirs, but this is still a movie I will enjoy quite a lot if I am in the right mood for it. 

27) Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman) - This is a very solid predecessor to Downton Abbey and an engaging whodunnit, and it was a best picture nominee, but I just don't think it stands out within Altman's career, and I did actually rank this last when I ranked them all a few years back. 

28) Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) - That this beat out Boyhood for best picture has become a conversation piece among cinephiles, who all too easily roll their eyes at the one shot gimmick and other of the film's indulgences. I still like it, but I feel fairly lonely in that opinion. 

29) Looking for Richard (1996, Al Pacino) - My very long-delayed second viewing of this convinced me that it might not be a whole lot more than an above-average documentary, but I still have fond feelings toward it -- especially as my first #1 ever.

30) The Whale (2022, Darren Aronofsky) - I have blubbering uncontrollably to blame for this #1 ranking, which I do still stand by. I've tried to argue that this movie is so much more than what some perceive as fatphobia, but I'm afraid that the perceived fatphobia is the only thing that really lingers in the court of public opinion. (But don't forget, Brendan Fraser actually won the Oscar, so I wasn't totally crazy.)

Do these tiers have the ring of truth to them?

On to the next 30. 

There will be loathing

There Will Be Blood spoilers to follow.

It's amazing the difference two years can make. Two years ago I watched my favorite film of 2007, There Will Be Blood, for only the third time, and the first time not in a movie theater. I'm not sure if it was the first viewing on the smaller screen that made the difference, but I remember my third viewing feeling like somewhat of an anticlimax after a layoff of a dozen years. 

Last night, I just sat there thoroughly enthralled by the movie. (Only four left until I've rewatched all 26 of my previous #1s.)

There are so many themes to think about in There Will Be Blood -- capitalism, greed, family, religion, even sociopathy -- but last night I was focused on something else: the extreme loathing that exists between Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano.

These two men have nothing but dislike for each other from their first moments together on screen. Crucially, though, it's not just a negative chemistry between the actors -- Dano is giving us two different characters with Paul, the brother we meet first and only once, and Eli, the brother who is Plainview's most regular antagonist throughout the movie. (And "antagonist" is really the right word here, as these two intentionally antagonize each other at every opportunity they get. Debate as much as you want about which one is worse, but Eli gets the title "antagonist" because this is clearly Plainview's story, making him the protagonist.)

In Paul, Plainview sees an able rival -- one who pisses him off because he doesn't fall for Plainview's tricks when Paul comes to offer him information on where to drill in exchange for a $500 payout, but all the smarter for that stubbornness. In Paul he sees someone like himself. Paul is intelligent and he knows exactly what cards to play at what time, just like Plainview himself. And he's also only in it for his own gain, just like Plainview.

Eli is equally venal in his way but he hides it behind a veil of religious righteousness, which disgusts Plainview. The difference here is that Plainview rarely engages in outright lies; he omits certain details, and engages in half-truths, like telling the Sunday family he is camping on their property to hunt quail. In a way that is a full lie, but in spirit it is more like not telling the whole story. And as evidence of some sort of core honesty in his business dealings, Daniel admits pretty readily that he knows about the oil on the Sunday property and is interested in it when Eli cross-examines him. He doesn't have elaborate stories at the ready that won't hold up to scrutiny. Rather, he presents simple lies ("my wife died in childbirth") and then when someone wants to pump him for more details, he says things like "I don't want to talk about those things." It's as though the necessary price for shrewd business is these minor fabrications, but he stops short of spinning yarns he can't control.

To Plainview, Eli is a constant, consistent liar in his revival-style religious performances and his claim that he can drive the spirit out of people, heal their sicknesses, etc. This is a much more harmful form of getting ahead, Plainview seems to believe, as it requires people to believe a protracted lie that just keeps getting more and more complicated. The lie itself is the thing, rather than the means to the thing -- even if both characters are, at their core, seeking financial enrichment.

To Eli, Plainview is an obstacle because he will not submit to any part of Eli's will, and in fact, openly despises him. Neither is he a potential convert, as someone like Daniel Plainview will never choose to believe in a higher power. In fact, the despising by Plainview is even more pernicious to Eli, in the sense that it is both open and veiled in politeness at the same time. When Eli approaches Plainview about his plan to bless the opening of the drilling -- a plan that twice makes mention of Plainview saying his name, a gratification of Eli's ego -- Plainview appears to agree to it with simple affirmations like "That'll be fine." Of course, when the time actually comes, he leaves Eli as just another face in the crowd while bestowing the ceremonial honor on his little sister -- a "daughter of these fair hills," an intentional and perverse bastardization of the very phrase Eli wanted Plainview to use for him.

It's on. And Daniel has the upper hand most of the time. When Eli has the audacity to storm up to Plainview to check on the status of his family's enrichment, Plainview slaps the shit out of him and ends up pushing his face down into the mud, in a humiliating sequence that highlights one person's total domination of the other. Tellingly, to further underscore the similarity between them, Eli then delivers the same sort of humiliating beatdown to his own father -- calling him "you stupid man" -- while still caked in the very mud Plainview despoiled him with.

Of course Eli gets his revenge. He gets the upper hand later on when Plainview needs the cooperation of old man Bandy, the only homestead in the area that did not sell to him, whose property is crucial to erecting the pipeline that will finalize Plainview's fortune. Bandy is a religious man, and he requests that Plainview repent his sins in the church. In gleeful relish of his position of power, Eli makes Plainview praise god and admit in loud tones that he has abandoned his son. Because he just can't help the chance to exact some physical vengeance on Plainview, he slaps him a half dozen times as well -- any more than that probably would have raised too many eyebrows in his congregation.

At that time, Plainview never gets the advantage back over Eli. Eli leaves on a mission and gets to depart town with a haughty look on his face, while Plainview looks away hurriedly. Eli would have "won," as it were.

But then in 1927, more than 15 years after these events, Eli finds himself needing to work with an alcoholic and spiritually broken version of Plainview -- who doesn't awaken from that bowling alley floor when Eli screams to him that a fire is consuming the building, only when he softly announces who is standing above him, an unresolved foe from the distant past. Sensing his own advantage in this scenario, Plainview turns the tables on Eli one last time, forcing him to shout "I am a false prophet and God is a superstition," then delivering his epic final smackdown about "DRAINAGE!!!," which finishes with the classic milkshake line. 

It's hard to say who ultimately wins in the end -- it seems they both destroy each other. Plainview literally beats Eli to death with a bowling pin, but you sense this is one murder he isn't going to be able to cover up. When his manservant witnesses the aftermath of the murder, you don't get the sense that Plainview is going to try one more murder and get away with it all. He says, meaningfully, "I'm finished." It's in the sing-songy voice that would usually be used in a context where you are asking someone to remove the empty plate of food in front of you, but we all know what it really means.

The looks on the faces of these actors as they deal with each other are priceless. Although Day-Lewis is the GOAT here and he outshines Dano in almost every aspect, the subtle crumpling of Eli's face whenever he realizes Plainview has shat upon him is the ultimate expression of this film's loathing. Even though it is Plainview who loathes as a hobby, and loathes many more people in this film that Eli loathes, Dano might be the best at it. 

As I was watching Day-Lewis here, I was reminded again of the sort of mafia boss who chills us to the core in the best gangster movies -- or maybe, in a more modern example, someone like Homelander in The Boys. His power and his capacity for holding a grudge are limitless. Just witness his eternal grudge against the oil company man who once dares to suggest that selling out to them and becoming a millionaire would allow him to spend more time with his son. He tells this man he will sneak into his house at night and slit his throat, and renews the threat during an otherwise innocuous interaction years later, when all this man wants to do is play nice. 

Still, the movie's scariest scene might belong to Eli as he rages against and beats his own father. He loathes the weakness and frailty of that old man more than he ever loathes Plainview. 

Interestingly, Dano wasn't even supposed to play this part originally -- apparently, the actor cast to play Eli got freaked out by Day-Lewis' method acting and he left the movie. Dano was only supposed to play Paul. Imagine how much weaker this film would be if Dano had been in that one scene and then left the movie. (To say nothing of how it amplifies the differences between these two brothers to have them played by the same actor.)

Given how incredible this film is at showing rather than telling -- I mean, this is a movie that has no dialogue for its first 14 minutes -- it surprised me a bit last night that Paul Thomas Anderson felt the need to put such a fine point on things that were conveyed wordlessly. If not for the juicy way Day-Lewis delivers this speech -- hell, every speech or line he has in the whole movie -- it might seem entirely superfluous:

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking."

There Will Be Blood demonstrates this from beginning to end, and it never stops being fascinating.

My 2007 film rankings (in 2007)

No time like the present to get started on a thing like this, right?

I said in yesterday's post, in which I announced a year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of deciding to rank my films each year, that I wanted to post my rankings from before this blog came online, as an additional means of keeping them safe from the caprices of fate.

I've got 12 to post, so might as well get going. 

Ha! I just noticed I can do one per month.

I decided to go chronologically backwards rather than chronologically forwards, for no good reason. I was sort of inspired by Filmspotting, the podcast I have listened to the longest, who made it a recurring feature to go back and consider their top five films from the years before they started the podcast, since they discussed all their new favorites of each year on the podcast (as I do here on my blog). They decided to start with the first year before they started and go backwards, so I'm doing the same.

(Technically speaking, these are my 2007 film rankings in early 2008, not 2007, but I thought that made it too confusing for anyone who looked at the title of this post at a glance.)

As a reminder, the idea behind this post will be to post the rankings as they were that year, for posterity and for your consideration, then show the films in the order they are currently ranked on my Flickchart, which is implicitly an accurate representation of what I think of them today. Following that will be a little analysis. 

There's no direct correlation between which lists I'm posting each month and which couple #1 movies I'm watching that month. As I said in yesterday's post, I intend to rewatch those #1s in random order, based on my moods, leading up to the year-end ranking of all 26. These lists will appear in reverse chronological order. Some month, the two will probably accidentally overlap.

And yes, I realize this is a pretty deep trip up my own asshole. Hey, your reading time is yours to do with as you see fit. Who am I to argue if you choose to spend it here?

Here are my 2007 film rankings as determined on the date these rankings were closed: January 22, 2008.

1. There Will Be Blood
2. Once
3. Juno
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
6. Sicko
7. Away From Her
8. Into the Wild
9. Alpha Dog
10. I Am Legend
11. Atonement
12. Noise
13. Margot at the Wedding
14. La Vie en Rose
15. Bee Movie
16. Beowulf
17. Knocked Up
18. Surf's Up
19. The Living Wake
20. Charlie Wilson's War
21. The Golden Compass
22. Bug
23. The Host
24. Paprika
25. Ratatouille
26. I'm Not There
27. The Savages
28. Persepolis
29. Zodiac
30. Grace is Gone
31. Stardust
32. Grindhouse
33. Music and Lyrics
34. The Ex
35. Next
36. The Simpsons Movie
37. Balls of Fury
38. Michael Clayton
39. 3:10 to Yuma
40. Hot Fuzz
41. Black Snake Moan
42. Transformers
43. A Mighty Heart
44. Superbad
45. The Jane Austen Book Club
46. 28 Weeks Later
47. Waitress
48. Awake
49. No Country for Old Men
50. Sunshine
51. 300
52. The Namesake
53. The Invisible
54.  Lars and the Real Girl
55.  Live Free or Die Hard
56.  Resident Evil: Extinction
57.  Breach
58. Disturbia
59. Arthur and the Invisibles
60. Arctic Tale
61. Premonition
62. Miss Navajo
63. Ghost Rider
64. The Number 23
65. Meet the Robinsons
66. Happily N’Ever After
67. Smokin’ Aces
68. Day Watch
69. Paris Je T’aime
70. Eagle vs. Shark
71. The Nanny Diaries
72. Southland Tales
73. American Gangster
74. Fracture
75. The Darjeeling Limited
76. 30 Days of Night
77. The Heartbreak Kid
78. Death Sentence
79. Shooter
80. Civic Duty
81. Epic Movie
82. Captivity

Only 82 movies! What a rookie I was back then. It's more than double that now.

And here's the order those movies respectively chart today on my Flickchart, with their overall ranking and percentage in parenthesis, as well as how they have moved up or down within the 82. Numerical ranking is out of 5763 movies on my chart.

1. There Will Be Blood (57, 99%) 0
2. Once (76, 99%) 0
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (102, 98%) +1
4. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (168, 97%) +1
5. Away From Her (343, 94%) +2
6. Juno (351, 94%) -3
7. Into the Wild (370, 94%) +1  
8. Atonement (371, 94%) +3
9. Beowulf (514, 91%) +7
10. Alpha Dog (646, 89%) -1
11. Sicko (732, 87%) -5
12. The Living Wake (741, 87%) +7
13. I Am Legend (751, 87%) - 3
14. La Vie en Rose (869, 85%) 0
15. Bug (877, 85%) +7
16. Margot at the Wedding (886, 85%) -3
17. The Golden Compass (902, 84%) +4
18. Charlie Wilson's War (972, 83%) +2
19. Surf's Up (1007, 83%) -1
20. Bee Movie (1079, 81%) -5
21. Zodiac (1120, 81%) +8
22. I'm Not There (1132, 80%) +4
23. Ratatouille (1149, 80%) +2
24. Noise (1196, 79%) -12
25. The Simpsons Movie (1310, 77%) +11
26. Grindhouse (1330, 77%) +6
27. Knocked Up (1476, 74%) -10
28. The Host (1675, 71%) -5
29. Black Snake Moan (1703, 70%) +12
30. Balls of Fury (1735, 70%) +7
31. Music and Lyrics (1817, 68%) +2
32. The Savages (2029, 65%) -5
33. Paprika (2031, 65%) -9
34. The Ex (2188, 62%) 0
35. The Jane Austin Book Club (2228, 61%) +10
36. Stardust (2258, 61%) -5
37. Hot Fuzz (2475, 57%) +3
38. Persepolis (2556, 56%) -10
39. Grace is Gone (2705, 53%) -9
40. No Country for Old Men (2776, 52%) +9
41. Michael Clayton (2783, 52%) -3
42. American Gangster (2849, 51%) +31
43. The Invisible (2857, 50%) +10
44. Transformers (2912, 49%) -2
45. A Mighty Heart (3009, 48%) -2
46. Next (3129, 46%) -11
47. Superbad (3329, 42%) -3
48. 300 (3406, 41%) +3
49. Resident Evil: Extinction (3437, 40%) +7
50. 3:10 to Yuma (3464, 40%) -11
51. Sunshine (3808, 34%) -1
52. Waitress (3909, 32%) -5
53. Premonition (3926, 32%) +8
54. Miss Navajo (4023, 30%) +8
55. Awake (4033, 30%) -7
56. Arthur and the Invisibles (4098, 29%) +3
57. 28 Weeks Later (4111, 29%) -11
58. Ghost Rider (4156, 28%) +5
59. Lars and the Real Girl (4222, 27%) -5
60. Meet the Robinsons (4274, 26%) +5
61. Disturbia (4306, 25%) -3
62. Arctic Tale (4419, 23%) -2
63. The Namesake (4494, 22%) -11
64. Day Watch (4623, 20%) +4
65. Paris Je T'aime (4639, 20%) +4
66. Breach (4644, 19%) -9
67. Happily N'Ever After (4650, 19%) -1
68. Smokin' Aces (4696, 19%) -1
69. Live Free or Die Hard (4745, 18%) -14
70. The Number 23 (4772, 17%) -6
71. Eagle vs. Shark (4922, 15%) -1
72. Southland Tales (4964, 14%) 0
73. The Darjeeling Limited (5031, 13%) +2
74. Fracture (5168, 10%) 0
75. Death Sentence (5207, 10%) +3
76. The Heartbreak Kid (5495, 5%) +1
77. The Nanny Diaries (5580, 3%) -6
78. Shooter (5609, 3%) +1
79. 30 Days of Night (5613, 3%) -3
80. Civic Duty (5640, 2%) 0
81. Captivity (5699, 1%) +1
82. Epic Movie (5721, 1%) -1

Now that I've typed all that out, it seems like a lot of work, and I may have to reconsider the utility of it going forward. Then again, the earlier the years get, the fewer titles I'll have -- I believe there were fewer than 40 in that first year. So I guess I'll kick the can down the road on that particular decision.

Five best 2007 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): The Lookout, My Kid Could Paint That, Shotgun Stories, Timecrimes, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Five worst 2007 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Dan in Real Life, Rocket Science, Run Fat Boy Run, Smiley Face, Stephen King's The Mist
Biggest risers: American Gangster (+31), Black Snake Moan (+12), The Simpsons Movie (+11)
Biggest fallers: Live Free or Die Hard (-14), Noise (-12), The Namesake/Next/3:10 to Yuma/28 Weeks Later (-11)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 51.09% (1 of 1 so far)

I actually have this blog to thank for the big rise in American Ganster's position. It was a 2010 rewatch of the movie for my series Second Chance Vance (discussed at length here) that allowed me to reevaluate the film and go from thumbs down to thumbs up. (Incidentally, it's as funny to look back on those early days of the blog as it is to look at these early movie lists.)

Among fallers, I believe I would still love Matthew Saville's Noise. However, I do know him -- saw his film at Sundance on a trip planned specifically to see it -- so it may just be that my initial ranking was a little inflated because I was too close to it, and it has settled from #13 to a more realistic #24 over the years. 

I am curious to figure out what I found and apparently continue to find so disagreeable about The Nanny Diairies, not a great film if I remember correctly (obviously), but surely innocuous enough, and an early Scarlett Johannson vehicle. It's not like we didn't know what she was capable of back then, as this was four years after Lost in Translation (another #1 of mine). I don't think I'm curious enough to actually watch it again, though. Maybe it just needs to come up in some more favorable duels on Flickchart.

Okay, one rankings committed to the permanence of the internet, 11 to go. 

A hard eight: Ranking Paul Thomas Anderson

Twenty-two years ago Paul Thomas Anderson began his feature-directing career with a movie called Hard Eight, or known by its original title, Sydney. (Not the city with the opera house; a man's name.)

Many other directors would have made a lot more than seven feature films since then. Heck, Woody Allen has made 22. But Anderson is no ordinary director. He's a craftsman with a vision, and he takes time to make his films. He has two separate gaps of five years without a film during that period, bookended by Punch-Drunk Love in 2002 and The Master in 2012. When he makes a movie, it's an event, and whatever it is, or however much you end up liking it, you need to see it.

That's why I did in fact go see Phantom Thread in the theater on Tuesday night, even though I've moved on from 2017. (I may still see Lady Bird, which finally opens today.) I've seen every Anderson film on the big screen except Hard Eight, because I didn't know who he was at the time, and Inherent Vice, which I skipped on the big screen because I had moved on from 2014 at the time it was released.

It's an event. You can't not.

And though I haven't done a post like this in a long time, ranking the career of a prominent director, I figured I couldn't wait for Anderson to get to ten feature films, because that could take another ten years. Besides, the symmetry with eight films and Hard Eight was too good to pass up.

So, without any further ado, my rankings of the the top eight films of one of our great contemporary masters, Paul Thomas Anderson. Interestingly, I noted that each of his films, including Phantom Thread, already has a label on my blog, meaning it's been discussed by me at least once before. Definitely worthy of a career retrospective, I'd say.

And sorry for the lack of drama, but when I've done these in the past -- with Danny Boyle, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers and Pixar, all of whose films I had also seen at the time -- I've gone from the best to the worst.

1. There Will Be Blood (2007) - It probably comes as no surprise that my #1 movie of 2007 is also my #1 Anderson movie, though I suppose you can't take that for granted, as one ranking year is different from another. Though in this case it does hold true. It was not only my best of the year, it was my eighth best of the decade. It's also the Anderson movie I'm most due to rewatch, as I saw it twice in the theater and then not again since then. (If you are this convinced of the quality of a film, you don't need to revisit it to decide its worth on a best-of-the-decade list.) What can a person say about There Will Be Blood that has not already been said? Well, I don't know that this exact phrase has been used: it's a capitalism horror movie, with a frightening monster at its core in Daniel Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview. I can't remember another instance of this film's era being recreated with such epic grandiosity, one strangely unbound by the Hollywood traditions with which it rubs elbows. This is a movie that opens with the entrancing, moldering noise of Johnny Greenwood's score, then moves into 20 minutes without dialogue as a man digs desperately for gold in the bottom of a well. Ultimately, though, the dialogue belonging to Plainview -- and its delivery by Day-Lewis -- is one of the most indelible, indisposable elements of the film. "Bastard in a basket" and "I drink your milkshake!" both came from a film that didn't need a single word to put us in its spell and keep us there.

2. Boogie Nights (1997) - It's the greatest Martin Scorsese movie that Martin Scorsese never made -- but so what. Anderson has good taste, and a skill set to honor that taste. It's interesting that Anderson was once considered a very successful mimic of other great directors (including Robert Altman in Magnolia), because as he has honed his voice, he's given us films that are truly like no one else's. Which doesn't mean that the voices he channeled didn't represent some of his best work. This sprawling epic through the porn industry is a tour de force of set design and cinematography, and it felt like a first with its frank look at the inner workings of that industry. (A topic that has since been revisited umpteen times in lesser films by less talented filmmakers.) In addition to breaking Mark Wahlberg as a star who would become one of Hollywood's most in demand, it also revived Burt Reynolds (briefly), and gave great showcases to the likes of Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle and William H. Macy. (And let's not forget Alfred Molina's one scene, a total mindfuck of gonzo tension.) Boogie Nights is a director's movie, it's an actor's movie, it's just a damn rollicking specimen of the craft, and it still holds up today like nobody's business.

3. Hard Eight (1996) - Anderson's least Andersonian film -- at least in terms of the size of the canvas on which he would come to paint -- is also my third favorite. I may have trouble articulating why this film works so well for me, but it probably gains from being seen within the perspective of the rest of Anderson's career, since it is so small in scale, making it feel like an example of Anderson's range rather than just the film on which he cut his teeth. Its intimacy it its most winning element, as every scene feels small and compressed, but only because the lives these people live are so small and compressed. They operate in very small circles, circling around craps tables and anonymous motel rooms, ultimately finding themselves in the position to express their deepest yearnings and fears to one another. Philip Baker Hall puts on a master class as Sydney, the man whom the movie was initially named after, and it reminds us that it's a shame he was not given more starring roles. (He's not dead yet, but being 86 years old tends to limit some of the prospect of that ever happening.) Sydney's dialogue is probably one of the clearest examples you'll see of a writer-director directly delivering his own ruminations about the way the world works, but Sydney and Anderson are both wise people from whom I am ready to receive such ruminations.

4. Punch-Drunk Love (2002) - This is the highest Anderson film on my list that I've seen only once, and I do think it benefits some from the words of rhapsody directed toward it that I have absorbed in the ensuing years. This is the first time I found Anderson really burrowing down into something truly eccentric, and I admit that it left me off balance for much of the movie, in a way I was not always sure of. But just recalling some of the scenes and images from that film that still stick with me -- like the piano being dumped off the back of that truck, or Adam Sandler pacing around the room on the phone while the walls and score seem to close in on him -- remind me of the power of Anderson's tools as a filmmaker. Punch-Drunk Love is often thought of as a line of demarcation between when Anderson was doing things that were sort of conventional and when he stopped doing that -- the moment of him finding his voice. (The plague of frogs at the end of Magnolia could also be considered such a moment.) The filmmaker that has excited us with the sense of not knowing what he will do next, that has characterized all his subsequent films, was born here. The fact that some of that has resulted in diminishing returns for me is something I hope to grapple with on second viewings of some of the films lower on this list. Punch-Drunk Love was the beginning of Anderson not giving a fuck what we thought of his films, and that in itself is exciting.

5. Magnolia (1999) - And here is my highest ranked Anderson film where I find significant portions of the film problematic. I previously mentioned that this felt like an homage to Robert Altman, and it was earlier in the 1990s that I fell in love with that director, first with The Player, then with Short Cuts. Magnolia feels a bit like Anderson's Short Cuts ... with a downpour of frogs at the end. Even back then, when I was less jaded and more open to any way a director wanted to try to blow my mind, I found parts of this movie too clever by half, like the story about the person who was committing suicide but shot halfway through the leap from atop the building, transforming the death from a suicide into a murder. I don't even remember what the point of that little interlude was, and that's emblematic of Magnolia, in which Anderson seems to be working out some of his sophomoric musings, the possible ramblings of a stoner. I also consider it to be one of the most emotionally overwrought films I've ever seen. That said, bits of this movie stick with me like few other movies do, and some of Anderson's big gestures truly hit, particularly all the characters breaking the fourth wall to sing along to Aimee Mann's "Wise Up." It's probably a film I will always struggle with and love in equal measure.

6. Phantom Thread (2017) - Over time and with another viewing, I could see this flip-flopping with Magnolia, or even climbing higher than that on this chart. But one thing I've heard most people say about Phantom Thread, even those who love it, is that they didn't know quite what to make of it on first viewing. Some found that a thrilling, exhilarating experience; others, alienating. I probably land closer to the second camp than the first, but a second viewing could push me closer to the first. It's been only 48 hours since I saw this, so it's fair to say that the processing phase is still going on. It's always a joy to watch Daniel-Day Lewis, and Lesley Manville deserves the praise that has been lavished on her. The person I'm not sure about -- who could be key to my affection for the movie going one way or another -- is Vicky Krieps, about whom I'd like to devote her own blog post (and may still). I find it difficult to look at her, as her performance conveys quantities of vulnerability and yearning that leave me feeling discomfited. Being discomfited in an Anderson film is often a good thing, but after the movie I described it in a text to a friend this way: "It's a handsome puzzle box that I am not all that interested in prying open." But maybe one day I will pry it.

7. The Master (2012) - After waiting patiently for five years after There Will Be Blood for another PTA film to hit theaters, it was probably inevitable I would be a little disappointed by The Master. And yet I can easily recognize this as a kind of masterwork, so to speak, as it may be Anderson's greatest technical achievement, even including There Will Be Blood. Although I think he's too modest for this, Anderson could be describing himself with this movie's title, as the film feels like kind of an arrival at an otherworldly level of cinematic mastery. And yet the film leaves me so very cold, never able to relate to either Joaquin Phoenix's Freddy Quell or Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd, both of whom are performed expertly but feel kind of like empty vessels. It's easy enough to watch this film merely for surface pleasures, if that's all you can get from it, and I'm kind of afraid to say that may have been all I did get from it. I think the parasitic relationship between a shepherd and his sheep is explored in a fascinating way, but toward what purpose, I'm not quite sure. I do think I would benefit greatly from a second viewing, but then I've said that about almost every film on this list.

8. Inherent Vice (2014) - Some people say there's a great film buried somewhere within Inherent Vice, but I could not dig it out. This is the only Anderson film that gets lower than a passing grade on the star scale, as I gave it only 2.5 stars -- I was inclined to go even lower, but granted it the extra half star on account of me failing to get this movie certainly being a "me problem" on some level. My problem is I'm a bit biased against the detective movie in which the plot cannot be easily discerned, or discerned at all, Exhibit A being The Big Sleep, which I kind of can't stand. I was hoping this would strike me more like Altman's The Long Goodbye, which I do love, but I just couldn't get there. I also love Joaquin Phoenix, but he happens to appear in my two least favorite PTA movies. What are you going to do. This is the only movie on this list that I expect never to watch again, though I may be wrong about that. Certain moments do really stick with me, though, moments in which I can almost see my way through to his vision. I don't know why, but I remember this scene where Phoenix and -- Katherine Waterston, is it? -- go running through the rain to find a store that isn't there anymore. Why does that moment stick with me? I don't know, but it's got to be further evidence of Anderson's greatness as a filmmaker.

And that greatness is downright indisputable. It does sadden me that I'm writing this post in what must described as a downward trajectory in my own feelings toward Anderson, as his last three films make up the bottom three on this chart. From that you must conclude that I think Anderson is getting worse, not better.

But those films are full of daring and a total lack of convention, making Anderson feel less like a cinematic imitator and more like a maverick. We need mavericks like him around.

If anything, I think of Anderson as like Samantha in another Phoenix movie, Her. He has evolved to the point that he has progressed beyond my mere human capability of understanding him.

Which I think means he should keep right on doing exactly what he's doing, and one day, if I'm lucky, I'll catch up.

Here's to his 2020 release being my #1 of that year.

A title that could describe its director

It would be an understatement to say I'm excited for the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

I'm so excited, and want to so little advanced footage to bias me one way or another, that I actually bowed my head while the trailer was playing before Celeste and Jesse Forever on Monday. So I heard the trailer, but didn't watch it, in keeping with my strict avoidance policy with regards to promotional material for The Master.

Reason: Few directors are as capable of surprising us as Anderson. When I go to see his movie this weekend, I want those surprises to flow over me like a tide of rushing water.

After all, The Master is the latest work from our current master of cinema.

Paul Thomas Anderson has made just five feature-length movies prior to this one, and I haven't wholeheartedly embraced all of them. But it's hard not to look back at those five films and see a creative talent of great vision and ambition. His stinginess -- after a relatively prolific start to his career, he's given us only two films in the past decade -- is part of his mystique.

The true greats -- like his collaborator in There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day Lewis -- take time to perfect their craft, even and perhaps especially if it means their fans have to wait. Perhaps I'm just used to this kind of thing, as my favorite band -- Nine Inch Nails -- used to routinely take five-and-a-half-years between new albums. When The Master hits theaters today -- at least in my market -- it will have been nearly five years since There Will Be Blood blew the doors off our expectations of what Anderson can accomplish.

Like many people given the privilege of directing a film, Anderson started modestly. His 1996 debut, Hard Eight, is perhaps the very definition of modesty. It concerns a downtrodden gambler (John C. Reilly) and the father figure (Philip Baker Hall) who takes him under his wing, in an attempt to turn the man's life around through perfecting the very endeavor at which he had failed (gambling). There's more to it than that, and the film also features such big names as Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson. But it's essentially a small character study, painted in intimate strokes.

Anderson threw modesty out the window -- literally and figuratively -- the following year with the masterpiece Boogie Nights. Not only did it include porn, prosthetic penises and mounds of cocaine, but the movie was a stylistic tour-de-force, as grandiose and ambitious as Hard Eight was quiet and contemplative. The film also represented Anderson's first instance of expertly imitating the style of another master, which he has done several times during his career. (In fact, I almost called this post "The Master ... of disguise?," except that I could only come up with two convincing examples of Anderson aping another director's style). Boogie Nights could have just as easily been made by Martin Scorsese, and people would include it in the conversation when discussing Scorsese's best films.

The director confounded me personally with his next film, Magnolia, in 1999. It wasn't because I considered the film bad -- in fact, in many ways it was more ambitious than even Boogie Nights. Rather, it was because I thought Anderson's tendency toward imitation overwhelmed him this time. I found Magnolia to owe entirely too much to the films of Robert Altman, specifically Short Cuts, a favorite of mine. Both this film and Short Cuts deal with a dozen or so intersecting lives, take place in Los Angeles, have a ridiculously epic climax, and run three hours in length. However, my initial reaction to Magnolia soon subsided, and I decided that I felt confounded by it because it had discomfited me in some way -- which is almost always a good thing when watching a movie. One of the first things I learned about my wife is that she loves this movie, and as it happens, a discussion last week led to my renting it from Netflix so we'll have it available to watch again -- whenever we seem to unexpectedly have three hours at our disposal.

So as not to pigeonhole himself as an auteur only capable of painting on a large canvas, Anderson went intimate again with Punch-Drunk Love in 2002. And as a great indication of the many ways Anderson is capable of touching many different movie fans, I know a number of people who consider this his greatest achievement. As though intentionally trying to challenge himself, Anderson took Adam Sandler and said "I can make a great film with this guy, and show you a side of him you've never seen." He certainly did that. I may not love Punch-Drunk Love as much as its ardent fans, but it's another film that ages well in my mind, as ambitious with sound, framing and just plain eccentricity as his two previous films are ambitious with scope. It's a love story literally like no other.

Anderson's first five-year layoff then followed, and the results were a spectacular return to epic form. There Will Be Blood was, for many critics, one of the most vital American films in a decade, the 2007 version of Oscar's annual failure to recognize the best film made that year. On the strength of the towering performance by Day-Lewis, Blood is a masterpiece of sound and vision, featuring such details as an anachronistic score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, an opening 20 minutes that contain no dialogue, a grand American story of enterprise, greed, violence and corruption, and breathtaking cinematography of the plains that earned this film comparisons to the great westerns of old. Many critics listed it as the best film made in the first decade of the 21st century.

So now we wait to see what will be Anderson's encore after his masterpiece -- or perhaps, just the latest in a string of masterpieces. It's easy to imagine that our master may have made another Masterpiece, and a number of critics have already proclaimed it such.

I'll be finding out soon. Real soon.

These are the times when it makes me giddy to be a cinephile.