25. DRIVE
372 LISTS | 81 TOP SPOTS Nicolas Winding Refn | 100 mins | Crime/Drama Ryan Gosling | Carey Mulligan | Bryan Cranston | Albert Brooks
“Screw Oscar, which will surely ignore Drive because it’s too bloody, too creative, too ambitious and too polarizing to comfort audiences. Solid reasons, I say, for naming Drive the year’s best movie. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn puts an iconic Ryan Gosling behind the wheel into a feverish battle between good and its opposite (Albert Brooks does great evil). Hard-wired to the year’s most propulsive synth score, Drive is pure cinema. I couldn’t have liked it more.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
24. DUNKIRK
378 LISTS | 40 TOP SPOTS Christopher Nolan | 106 mins | Action/Drama/History Fionn Whitehead |Barry Keoghan |Mark Rylance |Tom Hardy
“Christopher Nolan dispenses with the exposition in favor of immersive aesthetics with Dunkirk, a dramatic account of the WWII evacuation of Dunkirk, France’s beaches in 1941. Fractured between three interwoven time frames and perspectives (land, sea and air), and shot almost entirely in 70mm IMAX—which stands as the ideal format in which to see this overwhelmingly experiential work—Nolan’s wartime tale cares little for character detail or contextual background. Instead, it thrusts viewers into the chaos engulfing a variety of infantrymen (including Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles), commanders (primarily, Kenneth Branagh), fighter pilots (led by Tom Hardy), and civilian boatman (notably, Mark Rylance), all of whose sacrifice, selfishness, cowardice, and heroism is thrown into sharp relief by Nolan’s grand set pieces. Through its towering scale, superb staging, and inventive structure, Dunkirk melds the micro and the macro with a formal daring that’s breathtaking, along the way underscoring the unrivaled power of experiencing a truly epic film on a big screen.” – Nick Schager, Esquire
23. ROMA
389 LISTS | 110 TOP SPOTS Alfonso Cuarón | 135 mins | Drama Yalitza Aparicio | Marina de Tavira | Diego Cortina Autrey | Carlos Peralta
“Alfonso Cuarón’s haunting portrait of a socially, racially, and sexually stratified Mexico City in 1970 and ’71 comes dressed as an autobiographical memory play: Cuarón’s stylized recollection of his newly broken middle-class family and of the housekeeper, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who struggled to find her equilibrium in a world in which she had so little power. An indigenous Mexican (her primary language is Mixtec) in a country ruled by the descendants of Spanish colonialists, Cleo holds herself in reserve, and at first even the camera can’t quite penetrate her mask of stoicism. But slowly … slowly … the audience is drawn in, and Cuarón’s formal, black-and-white cinematography (nearly every shot is a gliding horizontal line) begins to pay off emotionally. Cleo is buffeted, trapped, nearly broken, until her suffering and endurance takes on the quality of myth. Does Cuarón overidealize Cleo? Certainly. But the hard, material fact of her and of Aparicio’s performance gives Roma its human core. If you weep through the final credits, you won’t be alone.” – David Edelstein, Vulture
22. MARRIAGE STORY
401 LISTS | 30 TOP SPOTS Noah Baumbach | 136 mins | Comedy/Drama/Romance Adam Driver | Scarlett Johansson | Laura Dern | Alan Alda
“In Noah Baumbach’s most complete picture to date, the stalwart indie filmmaker combines the vivid slice-of-life vignettes of Frances Ha with the unflinching self-examination of The Squid And The Whale. He also tells a rich and provocative story, about two basically decent people who suffer mightily once they turn their irreconcilable differences over to the rough justice of family court. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson—joined by an all-star cast of supporting players—are at their best, bringing such nuance to their characters that the audience can see both why this couple fell in love and why they have to split. But Marriage Story is really Baumbach’s show, as he takes what he’s learned from Brian De Palma and The New Yorker short stories, breaking the arc of a messy divorce down to a series of riveting set pieces.” – Noel Murray, AV Club
21. TOY STORY 3
277 LISTS | 34 TOP SPOTS Lee Unkrich | 103 mins | Animation/Adventure/Comedy Tom Hanks | Tim Allen | Joan Cusack | Ned Beatty
“Wild and transporting. Dispatched to a day-care center, Woody, Buzz, and the gang must confront their impending obsolescence, which is enough to break your heart. The film then turns into a hilariously elaborate prison-escape thriller, but the toys aren’t just running for their plastic lives. They’re fighting for the right to be playthings again — for the sacred, make-believe pleasures of analog imagination that have been chased out of childhood by technology.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
20. HER
401 LISTS | 86 TOP SPOTS Spike Jonze | 126 mins | Drama/Romance/Sci-Fi Joaquin Phoenix | Amy Adams | Scarlett Johansson | Rooney Mara
“Spike Jonze’s Her begins with a love letter—a misdirect. It’s a billet-doux by proxy, ghost-authored, dictated to a machine. We open on the wide-eyed mug of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), seeming to speak from the heart, recalling fondly a first love that proves, with the reveal of an incongruous anniversary, to belong to somebody else. So the “handwritten letters” of beautifulhandwrittenletters.com are merely approximations of the form: our near-future’s phantom memorandum. But what matters here is that the love is real. Theodore’s letters, in a sense the film’s emotional through line, are never less than deeply felt, swelling with earnest affection. That he’s talking through and to another can’t reduce the depth of feeling in the sentiments. The genius of Her is that it doesn’t ask you to believe in the truth of its speculative science fiction so much as it does the truth of its romance, which is to say that Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) means more as metaphor—for a hard-won connection, long-distance or otherwise remote—than as a prediction of future tech. Her is about “the modern condition,” but not, importantly, in the strictly satirical sense: It tells us less about how we live than how we love.” – Calum Marsh, Slant Magazine
19. THE TREE OF LIFE
391 LISTS | 80 TOP SPOTS Terrence Malick | 139 mins | Drama/Fantasy Brad Pitt | Sean Penn | Jessica Chastain | Hunter McCracken
“A thought experiment becomes a striking and deeply effecting picture in Terrence Malick’s ponder of nothing more profound than the nature of existence. While not exactly a narrative film in the strictest sense, Tree of Life still tells a vital and potent story — about a childhood in 1950s Texas, about an adulthood in an anonymous city, about the very beginnings of the Earth’s idea of living. The Texas sequence in particular is a stunner, with Malick’s camera wandering freely through a house and a surrounding neighborhood, showing us a whole childhood’s worth of frustration and wonder and discovery and sadness in an hour. Here again Jessica Chastain projects almost otherworldly grace, while Brad Pitt lets his innate twinkle disappear, and thus shines even more, as a tough love dad. Malick’s movies aren’t for everyone, and that’s OK, but for those that are fans, this a high achievement.” – Richard Lawson, The Atlantic
18. BLACK SWAN
292 LISTS | 43 TOP SPOTS Darren Aronofsky | 108 mins | Drama/Thriller Natalie Portman | Mila Kunis | Vincent Cassel | Winona Ryder
“At once gorgeous and gloriously nutso, a trippy, twisted fantasy that delights and disturbs. Darren Aronofsky takes the same stripped-down fascination with the minutiae of preparation he brought to his Oscar-nominated “The Wrestler” and applies it to the pursuit of a different kind of artistry: ballet. But then he mixes in a wildly hallucinatory flair as “Black Swan” enters darker psychological territory, featuring a brave performance from Natalie Portman as a dancer slipping into madness. Working with his frequent cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, and blending dazzling visual effects, Aronofsky spins a nightmare scenario within a seemingly gentile world.” – Christy Lemire, Associated Press
17. ZERO DARK THIRTY
388 LISTS | 78 TOP SPOTS Kathryn Bigelow | 157 mins | Drama/Thriller Jessica Chastain | Joel Edgerton | Chris Pratt | Mark Strong
“In the months and days leading up to the release of Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the film was pilloried by the right as propaganda for President Obama in an election year, and by the left as a love letter to torture. But director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, the team responsible for The Hurt Locker, are primarily interested in pursuing the truth wherever it leads them, and evoking history without appeal to ideologues of any stripe. Aligning itself with a CIA official (Jessica Chastain) whose decade-long pursuit of bin Laden calls on vast reserves of courage and resolve, Zero Dark Thirty goes deep into the shadow world of “enhanced interrogation” and black sites, details the many leads and red herrings that finally brought investigators to a compound in Abbottabad, and executes the raid itself with stomach-turning verisimilitude. Though Bigelow and Boal pay tribute to the dogged skill of the investigators who found Bin Laden and the SEAL members who stormed the compound, they aren’t interested in rah-rah triumphalism. It’s a sobering journey into the darkness.” – AV Club
16. SPOTLIGHT
403 LISTS | 67 TOP SPOTS Tom McCarthy | 129 mins | Biography/Crime/Drama Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber
Tom McCarthy’s journalism procedural doesn’t just reconstruct the Boston Globe’s groundbreaking 2001 reporting of the Catholic priest abuse scandal, right down to the last Post-it note and follow-up phone call. It does something not many Hollywood movies dared to do in 2015: It slows down, making us privy to every editorial-meeting debate and red-tape-related delay, so that when those damning headlines go to press in the final montage, you understand exactly how much effort, dedication, and courage it took for the good guys to prevail this time.” – Dana Stevens, Slate
15. INCEPTION
290 LISTS | 55 TOP SPOTS Christopher Nolan | 148 mins | Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi Leonardo DiCaprio | Joseph Gordon-Levitt | Ellen Page | Ken Watanabe
“Christopher Nolan messes with our heads in ways no other studio filmmaker dares. He dazzles with his visual effects, wows with his action scenes, thrills with his surprises. All along, he asks us to think as he spins a fantastically entertaining tale of a lost man (Leonardo DiCaprio) clawing his way back to the things that matter through a virtual world of dreams. Nolan has planted the seed of the brainy blockbuster in Hollywood. Here’s hoping the idea doesn’t die of loneliness.” – David Germain, Associated Press
14. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
526 LISTS | 70 TOP SPOTS Kenneth Lonergan | 137 mins | Drama Casey Affleck |Michelle Williams |Kyle Chandler |Lucas Hedges
“However hard your 2016 was, it’s a good bet that the worst of it couldn’t quite compare to what eats away at Lee Chandler, the withdrawn Boston handyman Casey Affleck plays in Manchester By The Sea. Lee has returned to his seaside hometown to bury his older brother, and that’s just the tip of the traumatic iceberg for this broken man, whose devastating history hangs over the film’s events like a storm cloud over Massachusetts water. But for all the heartbreak that pumps through it, Kenneth Lonergan’s ambitious third feature isn’t some miserable slog: Anchored by a career-best performance from Affleck, who achieves the herculean feat of making emotional unavailability compelling, Manchester By The Sea is often as flat-out funny as it is wrenching. What makes it our favorite movie in an exceptional year for them is the way that Lonergan, the playwright-turned-filmmaker behind Margaret and You Can Count On Me, manages to ground a family tragedy of staggering proportions in the quotidian crap of everyday life. Even when reaching for the operatic, he keeps the focus on small human foibles: a cellphone going off at a funeral; a car parked who knows where; a teenager (Lucas Hedges, in what should be a star-making breakout turn) whose mourning process is no more preoccupying than his desperate attempts to get some alone time with his girlfriend. In a year many couldn’t wait to finish, Manchester By The Sea argued not that everything will be all right in the end—for some, it definitely won’t be—but that the people in your life are the reason to keep on fighting, even when hope seems lost. Now, maybe more than ever, that’s commiseration we can use.” – A.A. Dowd, AV Club
13. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
434 LISTS | 53 TOP SPOTS Ethan Coen and Joel Coen | 104 mins | Comedy/Drama/Music Oscar Isaac | Carey Mulligan | John Goodman | Garrett Hedlund
“The moodiness, unexpected turns, borderline surreal blasts of bizarre incidents and deep-dish evocation of a scene and state of mind in Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Brothers’s 16th film have stuck with me all year. Interpretations have varied as to what we’re to make of the struggling Greenwich Village folk singer who’s his own worst enemy and is so sublimely played by Oscar Isaac. I still stick with the idea that the Coens wanted to show us the guy who, for all his talent, did not become Dylan; for some, being an anti-social purist works, for others it doesn’t. It’s one of the brothers’ two or three best.” – Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter
12. THE IRISHMAN
442 LISTS | 54 TOP SPOTS Martin Scorsese | 209 mins | Biography/Crime/Drama Robert De Niro | Al Pacino | Joe Pesci | Harvey Keitel
“Martin Scorsese, 77, and still America’s greatest living filmmaker, shook up the year by claiming Marvel movies aren’t cinema. “What’s not there is revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger,” claimed the director, who supplies all that and more in what is not just the best film of 2019 but also an incendiary, indelible summation of a landmark career. The film reunites Scorsese with his peerless acting muses Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci nearly 25 years after they made Casino. It also brings in a live-wire Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters leader who De Niro’s hit man, Frank Sheeran, is ordered to kill. A digital de-aging process allows the actors to play younger as the film spans decades of American history. But it’s not violence that brings them down — it’s debilitating age. That searing note of poetic justice makes The Irishman unique among Scorsese’s Mob films, from Goodfellas to The Departed, and earns a place in the cinematic canon.” – Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times
11. GRAVITY
449 LISTS | 87 TOP SPOTS Alfonso Cuarón | 91 mins | Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller Sandra Bullock | George Clooney | Ed Harris | Orto Ignatiussen
“Alfonso Cuarón’s luminous and transportive technological daydream puts us right up in space, along with a couple of U.S. shuttle astronauts. The film’s casual magic begins with how it places us on their been-there-gawked-at-that wavelength, even as the images are making our jaws drop. Then disaster strikes, and George Clooney (as a jaded veteran) and Sandra Bullock (as a troubled newbie) have to float their way to safety with nothing beneath them but a void. Some have accused Cuarón’s film of having a ”thin” story, but actually it’s just slender — and organic — enough to reinforce the feeling that every moment in Gravity is flowing into the next one. More than a ”ride,” the film is an experience, nearly tactile in its drama. The logistics of dodging hurtling debris, or of how to glide through a foreign satellite, very much become the story. So does the galvanizing image of Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone, with nothing left to lose, deciding to embrace life in the void.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
10. LADY BIRD
447 LISTS | 52 TOP SPOTS Greta Gerwig | 94 mins | Comedy/Drama Saoirse Ronan |Laurie Metcalf |Tracy Letts |Lucas Hedges
“Lady Bird topped my list almost instantly, and only rose in my estimation on repeated viewings. For many who saw it (including me), it felt like a movie made not just for but about me. Lady Bird is a masterful, exquisite coming-of-age comedy starring the great Saoirse Ronan as Christine — or “Lady Bird,” as she’s re-christened herself — and it’s as funny, smart, and filled with yearning as its heroine. Writer-director Greta Gerwig made the film as an act of love, not just toward her hometown of Sacramento but also toward girlhood, and toward the feeling of always being on the outside of wherever real life is happening. Lady Bird is the rare movie that manages to be affectionate, entertaining, hilarious, witty, and confident. And one line from it struck me as the guiding principle of many of the year’s best films: “Don’t you think they are the same thing? Love, and attention?”” – Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
9. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
434 LISTS | 28 TOP SPOTS Wes Anderson | 99 mins | Adventure/Comedy/Crime Ralph Fiennes | F. Murray Abraham | Mathieu Amalric | Adrien Brody
“Wes Anderson’s films have always been easier to admire than embrace. They’re like hermetic, handcrafted dioramas in which every last detail, no matter how tiny, has been exquisitely attended to—often at the sake of real emotional engagement. But with The Grand Budapest Hotel, a deliriously funny and wistfully romantic fairy tale about a time long lost to history, the director finally found the human touch. It suits him. Set in the fictional European nation of Zubrowka sometime between the world wars, the film tells the story of a world-class concierge and gigolo named Monsieur Gustave (a marvelously persnickety Ralph Fiennes) and his ever-loyal lobby boy (the droll, deadpan Tony Revolori). A grab bag of dizzy intrigue swirls around them and the supporting cast of colorful oddballs, all while the ominous specter of fascism looms just outside the frame. For once, Anderson has created a confectionary universe that not only dazzles your eye but also breaks your heart.” – Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
8. ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD
469 LISTS | 80 TOP SPOTS Quentin Tarantino | 161 mins | Comedy/Drama Leonardo DiCaprio | Brad Pitt | Margot Robbie | Emile Hirsch
“In this gorgeously meandering farrago, two aging, increasingly irrelevant white males from ’50s cowboy TV recover their mojo enough to defend themselves against dirty hippie girls and thereby save a blonde, pregnant movie princess from being butchered. On paper it sounds a tad … reactionary. But Quentin Tarantino’s tenth film — starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt — is more wistful pipe dream than manifesto. Above all, it’s a fetishistic collage of ’60s bric-a-brac that transcends its inspirations, building to a denouement at once euphoric and heartbreaking. Once again, Tarantino has created a unique frame in which to examine (or maybe just to live inside) the movie world that, for better or worse, shaped him.” –David Edelstein, Vulture
7. 12 YEARS A SLAVE
484 LISTS | 120 TOP SPOTS Steve McQueen | 134 mins | Biography/Drama/History Chiwetel Ejiofor | Michael Kenneth Williams | Michael Fassbender | Brad Pitt
“In the hands of any other director, the true story of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man kidnapped and forced into slavery from 1841 to 1853, could very well have been formulaic, run-of-the-mill and overly sentimental. Thankfully it landed in the hands of Steve McQueen (“Shame”), who portrays the brutality of slavery by framing Northrup’s tale as a taut thriller, creating a visceral experience for viewers akin to someone grabbing you by the throat and not letting go for two hours (in a good, somewhat cathartic way). What results is an instant classic, and the definitive slavery film of our time. Believe the hype: “12 Years a Slave” will knock you out … again, in a good way.” – Kevin Polowy, Yahoo! Movies
6. GET OUT
532 LISTS | 82 TOP SPOTS Jordan Peele | 104 mins | Horror/Mystery/Thriller Daniel Kaluuya |Allison Williams |Bradley Whitford |Catherine Keener
“It feels like a decade has passed since February, when Jordan Peele’s directorial debut opened in theaters and went on to become one of the year’s biggest cultural breakthroughs. Looking back on Get Out from the vantage point of December, what’s striking about it is how funny it is (sorry, Golden Globes truthers) as well as how eerie. Peele’s is a sharp, incisive film about liberal racism and supposed allies who are actually engaged in a very literal and gruesome appropriation of blackness. But it’s also a deft, meticulously made horror comedy that doesn’t waste a beat or a bit of imagery.
Even the throwaway anecdote Dean (Bradley Whitford) tells about how his father lost an Olympic slot to Jesse Owens lines up with that deeply unsettling late-night encounter Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) has with the house’s caretaker, Walter (Marcus Henderson), though we don’t know it at first. The scene in which Rose (Allison Williams) challenges the cop who’s asking for her boyfriend’s ID takes on a very different meaning by the end of the film. And that last glimpse of Rose provides a bleak but resonant parallel with the story Chris tells about his mother. The whole film comes together likes a power chord.” – Alison Willmore, BuzzFeed News
5. MOONLIGHT
662 LISTS | 163 TOP SPOTS Barry Jenkins | 111 mins | Drama Mahershala Ali |Naomie Harris |Trevante Rhodes |Alex R. Hibbert
“Nothing portended Moonlight as a masterpiece. Shot on a shoestring over a scant 25 days by an unknown director and largely devoid of big-name stars, Barry Jenkins’ hushed, artful indie didn’t so much arrive as drift gently into moviegoers’ consciousness. But by the time the credits rolled, the effect was both radical and sublime, a rare cinematic grace note in a noisy, bitterly fractious year. We first meet Chiron (played at various stages by Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes) as a wary latchkey kid in Miami drawn out of his shell by a local drug dealer (Mahershala Ali), then watch as he grows slowly, fitfully into his own skin. The movie could easily be dismissed as a panopticon of hot-button intersectional issues—addiction, poverty, single parenthood, black male sexuality. Instead, it’s something much richer: an achingly personal portrait of lives lived on the margins, and a filmmaking triumph of transcendent, heartbreaking beauty.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
4. PARASITE
586 LISTS | 148 TOP SPOTS Bong Joon Ho | 132 mins | Comedy/Drama/Thriller Kang-ho Song | Sun-kyun Lee | Yeo-jeong Jo | Woo-sik Choi
“With all the buzz surrounding this movie once it hit theaters back in the fall, I was glad to experience it having read very little about the plot. That made this a roller coaster of a theatrical experience, especially since the movie isn’t so easily defined in one particular genre, fluctuating from an amusing family heist to a grim thriller and a poignant commentary on class. Full of suspense, horror, comedy, chills, and plenty of shocking twists, there’s no movie out there like Parasite. Director Bong Joon-ho lifts up the poor, knocks down the rich, but ultimately takes blender to everyone to show that we’re all animals willing to do whatever we have to in order to keep what we have or get something more, even if it means defying others of the same satisfaction. It’s brutal in its scathing commentary on the dark side of our ambitions, and even though the escalation of the film’s thrills feel like they could only exist on the big screen, the sentiment of what happens on the screen is very much present in our everyday lives.” – Ethan Anderton, SlashFilm
3. BOYHOOD
555 LISTS | 195 TOP SPOTS Richard Linklater | 165 mins | Drama Ellar Coltrane | Patricia Arquette | Ethan Hawke | Elijah Smith
“The smallest, quietest, least pushy film of 2014 is also the year’s best and biggest emotional powerhouse. For Boyhood, writer-director Richard Linklater carved out shooting time over 12 years to tell the story of a then-six-year-old Texas boy (stellar newcomer Ellar Coltrane) growing up as the child of divorced parents, indelibly played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette. But what about the risk if the actors got sick or worse? Who does that? Linklater does that. Boyhood, sculpted from the highs and lows of his own life, is his landmark, his purest personal expression.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
2. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
571 LISTS | 162 TOP SPOTS George Miller | 120 mins | Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz
“Quite simply the most thrilling action movie of the decade, George Miller’s return to the sun-blasted deserts of his Mad Max universe makes quite a case for waiting 30 years between films in a franchise, and for upending audience expectations while still satisfying primal needs. All you want is here: roaring car chases, belching fire, massive explosions, ludicrous acrobatics, crunching fights. Fury Road is perpetually moving, but never gets repetitive or monotonous. Miller has stocked his movie with so many ingenious practical effects that what could be a fairly simple chase movie becomes something uniquely breathtaking. What we didn’t think to expect was the film’s surprisingly feminist take on dystopia, with Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa leading a women’s-liberation movement that mostly takes center stage, leaving stolid Max (Tom Hardy, doing his thing) to help out when he can. Grim, loud, and eye-popping, Fury Road is far and away the most memorable movie experience of 2015, an action movie with soul, a post-apocalyptic chiller with hope, a blockbuster with boundless style. What a trip.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
447 LISTS | 110 TOP SPOTS David Fincher | 120 mins | Biography/Drama Jesse Eisenberg | Andrew Garfield | Justin Timberlake | Rooney Mara
“Here is a film about how people relate to their corporate roles and demographic groups rather than to each other as human beings. That’s the fascination for me; not the rise of social networks but the lives of those who are socially networked. Mark Zuckerberg, who made billions from Facebook and plans to give most of it away, isn’t driven by greed or the lust for power. He’s driven by obsession with an abstract system. He could as well be a chessmaster like Bobby Fischer. He finds satisfaction in manipulating systems.
The tension in the film is between Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, who may well have invented Facebook for all I know, but are traditional analog humans motivated by pride and possessiveness. If Zuckerberg took their idea and ran with it, it was because he saw it as a logical insight rather than intellectual property. Some films observe fundamental shifts in human nature, and this is one of them.
David Fincher’s direction, Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay and the acting by Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and the others all harmoniously create not only a story but a world view, showing how Zuckerberg is hopeless at personal relationships but instinctively projects himself into a virtual world and brings 500 million others behind him. “The Social Network” clarifies a process that some believe (and others fear) is creating a new mind-set.” – Roger Ebert
Full Top 100:
| R | Film | L | #1 | AR | L% | #1% | TCL | TCL1 | TCL% | TCL1% | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Social Network | 447 | 110 | 3.56 | 75% | 20% | 225 | 52 | 72% | 18% | 2010 |
| 2 | Mad Max: Fury Road | 571 | 162 | 3.82 | 69% | 22% | 244 | 66 | 64% | 19% | 2015 |
| 3 | Boyhood | 555 | 195 | 3.44 | 68% | 26% | 246 | 89 | 66% | 26% | 2014 |
| 4 | Parasite | 586 | 148 | 3.39 | 68% | 21% | 192 | 40 | 68% | 16% | 2019 |
| 5 | Moonlight | 662 | 163 | 3.66 | 63% | 19% | 266 | 69 | 68% | 19% | 2016 |
| 6 | Get Out | 532 | 82 | 4.14 | 63% | 12% | 200 | 28 | 60% | 9% | 2017 |
| 7 | 12 Years a Slave | 484 | 120 | 3.56 | 56% | 15% | 217 | 52 | 53% | 14% | 2013 |
| 8 | Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood | 469 | 80 | 3.97 | 54% | 11% | 155 | 31 | 55% | 13% | 2019 |
| 9 | The Grand Budapest Hotel | 434 | 28 | 4.10 | 53% | 4% | 187 | 13 | 50% | 4% | 2014 |
| 10 | Lady Bird | 447 | 52 | 4.05 | 53% | 7% | 182 | 26 | 54% | 9% | 2017 |
| 11 | Gravity | 449 | 87 | 4.07 | 52% | 11% | 198 | 41 | 49% | 11% | 2013 |
| 12 | The Irishman | 442 | 54 | 4.03 | 51% | 8% | 151 | 20 | 54% | 8% | 2019 |
| 13 | Inside Llewyn Davis | 434 | 53 | 3.91 | 50% | 7% | 223 | 30 | 55% | 8% | 2013 |
| 14 | Manchester by the Sea | 526 | 70 | 3.92 | 50% | 8% | 209 | 29 | 53% | 8% | 2016 |
| 15 | Inception | 290 | 55 | 3.85 | 49% | 10% | 124 | 22 | 40% | 8% | 2010 |
| 16 | Spotlight | 403 | 67 | 3.79 | 48% | 9% | 179 | 25 | 47% | 7% | 2015 |
| 17 | Zero Dark Thirty | 388 | 78 | 3.60 | 48% | 11% | 193 | 37 | 52% | 11% | 2012 |
| 18 | Black Swan | 292 | 43 | 3.86 | 48% | 8% | 126 | 16 | 41% | 6% | 2010 |
| 19 | The Tree of Life | 391 | 80 | 4.13 | 47% | 11% | 170 | 37 | 47% | 12% | 2011 |
| 20 | Her | 401 | 86 | 3.80 | 47% | 11% | 197 | 38 | 48% | 10% | 2013 |
| 21 | Toy Story 3 | 277 | 34 | 4.34 | 46% | 6% | 123 | 14 | 40% | 5% | 2010 |
| 22 | Marriage Story | 401 | 30 | 4.83 | 46% | 4% | 124 | 14 | 44% | 6% | 2019 |
| 23 | Roma | 389 | 110 | 3.43 | 45% | 16% | 170 | 61 | 49% | 19% | 2018 |
| 24 | Dunkirk | 378 | 40 | 4.23 | 45% | 6% | 128 | 14 | 38% | 5% | 2017 |
| 25 | Drive | 372 | 81 | 4.13 | 44% | 11% | 129 | 25 | 36% | 8% | 2011 |
| 26 | Birdman | 364 | 60 | 3.85 | 44% | 8% | 145 | 28 | 39% | 8% | 2014 |
| 27 | Moonrise Kingdom | 355 | 44 | 4.75 | 44% | 6% | 161 | 22 | 44% | 7% | 2012 |
| 28 | La La Land | 453 | 100 | 3.57 | 43% | 11% | 172 | 42 | 44% | 12% | 2016 |
| 29 | The Master | 349 | 57 | 4.15 | 43% | 8% | 173 | 32 | 47% | 10% | 2012 |
| 30 | The Florida Project | 358 | 48 | 4.23 | 42% | 7% | 145 | 25 | 43% | 8% | 2017 |
| 31 | Inside Out | 348 | 29 | 3.94 | 42% | 4% | 127 | 13 | 34% | 4% | 2015 |
| 32 | Winter's Bone | 251 | 26 | 4.67 | 42% | 5% | 125 | 15 | 40% | 5% | 2010 |
| 33 | First Reformed | 357 | 51 | 4.06 | 41% | 7% | 166 | 21 | 48% | 7% | 2018 |
| 34 | Carol | 341 | 63 | 4.07 | 41% | 9% | 166 | 28 | 44% | 8% | 2015 |
| 35 | Before Midnight | 344 | 46 | 4.17 | 40% | 6% | 163 | 26 | 40% | 7% | 2013 |
| 36 | Call Me By Your Name | 334 | 46 | 3.98 | 39% | 7% | 136 | 27 | 41% | 9% | 2017 |
| 37 | Whiplash | 316 | 32 | 4.15 | 38% | 4% | 128 | 15 | 35% | 4% | 2014 |
| 38 | Argo | 309 | 44 | 4.05 | 38% | 6% | 127 | 18 | 35% | 5% | 2012 |
| 39 | Uncut Gems | 321 | 46 | 4.49 | 37% | 7% | 102 | 16 | 36% | 7% | 2019 |
| 40 | The Favourite | 317 | 32 | 4.11 | 37% | 5% | 124 | 12 | 36% | 4% | 2018 |
| 41 | Lincoln | 299 | 35 | 4.19 | 37% | 5% | 137 | 14 | 37% | 4% | 2012 |
| 42 | Arrival | 375 | 43 | 4.44 | 36% | 5% | 126 | 16 | 32% | 4% | 2016 |
| 43 | Under the Skin | 292 | 61 | 4.17 | 36% | 8% | 138 | 30 | 37% | 9% | 2014 |
| 44 | Hugo | 297 | 38 | 4.49 | 35% | 5% | 126 | 17 | 35% | 6% | 2011 |
| 45 | True Grit | 214 | 13 | 4.84 | 35% | 2% | 90 | 3 | 29% | 1% | 2010 |
| 46 | The Artist | 293 | 52 | 3.75 | 35% | 7% | 115 | 21 | 32% | 7% | 2011 |
| 47 | Ex Machina | 283 | 23 | 4.96 | 34% | 3% | 112 | 9 | 30% | 3% | 2015 |
| 48 | Django Unchained | 274 | 22 | 4.36 | 34% | 3% | 114 | 9 | 31% | 3% | 2012 |
| 49 | The King's Speech | 202 | 18 | 4.03 | 34% | 3% | 89 | 9 | 29% | 3% | 2010 |
| 50 | Beasts of the Southern Wild | 265 | 26 | 4.28 | 33% | 4% | 125 | 16 | 34% | 5% | 2012 |
| 51 | Holy Motors | 265 | 58 | 4.54 | 33% | 8% | 135 | 27 | 37% | 8% | 2012 |
| 52 | If Beale Street Could Talk | 279 | 17 | 4.72 | 32% | 2% | 116 | 9 | 33% | 3% | 2018 |
| 53 | The Shape of Water | 273 | 47 | 4.30 | 32% | 7% | 96 | 18 | 29% | 6% | 2017 |
| 54 | Gone Girl | 264 | 12 | 4.64 | 32% | 2% | 97 | 4 | 26% | 1% | 2014 |
| 55 | Nightcrawler | 260 | 18 | 4.86 | 32% | 2% | 95 | 5 | 26% | 1% | 2014 |
| 56 | The Descendants | 264 | 33 | 4.21 | 31% | 5% | 117 | 13 | 32% | 4% | 2011 |
| 57 | Amour | 250 | 38 | 4.01 | 31% | 5% | 115 | 19 | 31% | 6% | 2012 |
| 58 | Silver Linings Playbook | 247 | 19 | 4.67 | 30% | 3% | 98 | 7 | 27% | 2% | 2012 |
| 59 | Hell or High Water | 319 | 19 | 4.55 | 30% | 2% | 110 | 8 | 28% | 2% | 2016 |
| 60 | The Wolf of Wall Street | 260 | 27 | 4.42 | 30% | 3% | 106 | 11 | 26% | 3% | 2013 |
| 61 | Phantom Thread | 254 | 33 | 3.94 | 30% | 5% | 125 | 20 | 37% | 7% | 2017 |
| 62 | Little Women (2019) | 258 | 19 | 4.99 | 30% | 3% | 88 | 3 | 31% | 1% | 2019 |
| 63 | Brooklyn | 245 | 24 | 4.81 | 29% | 3% | 110 | 14 | 29% | 4% | 2015 |
| 64 | Melancholia | 246 | 39 | 3.93 | 29% | 6% | 95 | 21 | 26% | 7% | 2011 |
| 65 | American Hustle | 252 | 29 | 4.02 | 29% | 4% | 110 | 10 | 27% | 3% | 2013 |
| 66 | 127 Hours | 174 | 18 | 4.71 | 29% | 3% | 79 | 10 | 25% | 4% | 2010 |
| 67 | Eighth Grade | 249 | 18 | 4.83 | 29% | 3% | 93 | 11 | 27% | 3% | 2018 |
| 68 | Knives Out | 248 | 17 | 5.92 | 29% | 2% | 54 | 3 | 19% | 1% | 2019 |
| 69 | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | 230 | 23 | 4.27 | 27% | 3% | 92 | 15 | 27% | 5% | 2017 |
| 70 | The Kids Are All Right | 159 | 8 | 5.11 | 27% | 1% | 77 | 4 | 25% | 1% | 2010 |
| 71 | BlacKkKlansman | 229 | 13 | 4.92 | 27% | 2% | 82 | 5 | 23% | 2% | 2018 |
| 72 | The Martian | 220 | 6 | 5.26 | 26% | 1% | 67 | 3 | 18% | 1% | 2015 |
| 73 | Black Panther | 226 | 18 | 4.87 | 26% | 3% | 67 | 4 | 19% | 1% | 2018 |
| 74 | Frances Ha | 225 | 13 | 5.16 | 26% | 2% | 99 | 5 | 24% | 1% | 2013 |
| 75 | Burning | 222 | 28 | 4.44 | 26% | 4% | 102 | 13 | 29% | 4% | 2018 |
| 76 | Midnight in Paris | 216 | 10 | 4.89 | 26% | 1% | 78 | 1 | 22% | 0% | 2011 |
| 77 | The Act of Killing | 217 | 28 | 4.53 | 25% | 3% | 119 | 18 | 29% | 5% | 2013 |
| 78 | Toni Erdmann | 260 | 44 | 3.94 | 25% | 5% | 119 | 22 | 30% | 6% | 2016 |
| 79 | Blue is the Warmest Color | 213 | 23 | 4.49 | 25% | 3% | 98 | 11 | 24% | 3% | 2013 |
| 80 | Room | 205 | 16 | 4.66 | 25% | 2% | 85 | 8 | 22% | 2% | 2015 |
| 81 | Guardians of the Galaxy | 200 | 17 | 4.84 | 24% | 2% | 62 | 0 | 17% | 0% | 2014 |
| 82 | The Farewell | 210 | 4 | 6.08 | 24% | 1% | 74 | 1 | 26% | 0% | 2019 |
| 83 | Moneyball | 199 | 10 | 5.19 | 24% | 1% | 79 | 6 | 22% | 2% | 2011 |
| 84 | A Separation | 198 | 14 | 4.36 | 24% | 2% | 102 | 7 | 28% | 2% | 2011 |
| 85 | Selma | 194 | 18 | 4.55 | 24% | 2% | 98 | 7 | 26% | 2% | 2014 |
| 86 | The Fighter | 141 | 2 | 5.50 | 24% | 0% | 56 | 0 | 18% | 0% | 2010 |
| 87 | The Ghost Writer | 140 | 10 | 5.27 | 23% | 2% | 76 | 4 | 24% | 1% | 2010 |
| 88 | Creed | 194 | 3 | 5.40 | 23% | 0% | 79 | 2 | 21% | 1% | 2015 |
| 89 | Snowpiercer | 190 | 12 | 5.78 | 23% | 2% | 79 | 3 | 21% | 1% | 2014 |
| 90 | Skyfall | 188 | 8 | 5.44 | 23% | 1% | 74 | 2 | 20% | 1% | 2012 |
| 91 | Ida | 189 | 17 | 4.71 | 23% | 2% | 103 | 9 | 28% | 3% | 2014 |
| 92 | Portrait of a Lady on Fire | 199 | 20 | 4.93 | 23% | 3% | 79 | 12 | 28% | 5% | 2019 |
| 93 | Elle | 240 | 18 | 4.31 | 23% | 2% | 94 | 8 | 24% | 2% | 2016 |
| 94 | Blade Runner 2049 | 191 | 17 | 4.75 | 23% | 2% | 52 | 3 | 16% | 1% | 2017 |
| 95 | The Big Sick | 190 | 5 | 5.15 | 22% | 1% | 58 | 0 | 17% | 0% | 2017 |
| 96 | The Handmaiden | 233 | 17 | 4.91 | 22% | 2% | 90 | 8 | 23% | 2% | 2016 |
| 97 | A Star Is Born (2018) | 191 | 20 | 4.22 | 22% | 3% | 57 | 4 | 16% | 1% | 2018 |
| 98 | The Lego Movie | 180 | 9 | 5.43 | 22% | 1% | 67 | 3 | 18% | 1% | 2014 |
| 99 | Good Time | 185 | 14 | 5.05 | 22% | 2% | 78 | 3 | 23% | 1% | 2017 |
| 100 | Sicario | 181 | 9 | 4.61 | 22% | 1% | 68 | 3 | 18% | 1% | 2015 |
R Rank
L Total number of lists where the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year
AR Average position on ranked top 10 lists
#1 Total number of lists where the film was selected as the best film of the year
L% Percentage of total lists where the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year
#1% Percentage of mentions where the film was selected as the best film of the year
TCL Number of times that the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year on top critics’ lists
TCL1 Number of times that the film was selected as the best film of the year on top critics’ lists
TCL% Percentage of times that the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year on top critics’ lists
TCL1% Percentage of lists where the film was selected as the best film of the year on top critics’ lists
You must be logged in to post a comment.