I make a list of my favorite 25 films, books, and albums toward the end of every year as part of an ongoing analysis of my changing interests. Here are this year's films in alphabetical order (because it's hard enough to choose 25 without actually trying to rank them in some arbitrary order of preference):
After Life (dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda, 1998)
Agguire, the Wrath of God (dir. Werner Herzog, 1972)
Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Au hasard Balthazar (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966)
The Color of Paradise (dir. Majid Majidi, 1999)
Duck Soup (dir. Leo McCarey, 1933)
Flowers of St. Francis (dir. Roberto Rosselini, 1950)
The General (dir. Buster Keaton, 1927)
The Grapes of Wrath (dir. John Ford, 1940)
Grave of the Fireflies (dir. Isao Takahata, 1988)
The Human Condition (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961)
Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
M (dir. Fritz Lang, 1931)
Play Time (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
Sansho the Bailiff (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
A Serious Man (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)
Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
Taste of Cherry (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949)
Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (dir. John Huston, 1948)
12 Angry Men (dir. Sydney Lumet, 1957)
Winter Light (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1962)
The Word (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
The World (dir. Jiangke Jia, 2004)
