10. SPIRITED AWAY
110 LISTS | 11 TOP SPOTS Hayao Miyazaki | 125 mins | Animation/Adventure/Family Daveigh Chase | Suzanne Pleshette | Miyu Irino | Rumi Hiiragi
“The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has a feel for the scary magic of fairy tales that the purveyors of American kid culture have almost entirely lost. This story of a 10-year-old girl’s adventures among the ghosts and monsters who inhabit an abandoned theme park may call to mind Lewis Carroll or ”The Wizard of Oz,” but its painterly colors and hallucinatory inventiveness ultimately defy all comparison.” – A.O. Scott, New York Times
9. PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
117 LISTS | 10 TOP SPOTS Paul Thomas Anderson | 95 mins | Comedy/Drama/Romance Adam Sandler | Emily Watson | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Jason Andrews
“Reese Witherspoon’s Sweet Home Alabama is not my idea of an entertaining romantic comedy. But her The Importance of Being Earnest is, and so are Cherish and even My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hugh Grant starred in two more I like: About a Boy and Two Weeks Notice. But best of all is P.T. Anderson’s Punch- Drunk Love, which got to me with its audacity. Adam Sandler redeems himself with a fearless performance as an explosive man in love.” – Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel
8. TALK TO HER
122 LISTS | 13 TOP SPOTS Pedro Almodóvar | 112 mins | Drama/Mystery/Romance Rosario Flores | Javier Cámara | Darío Grandinetti | Leonor Watling
“Pedro Almodóvar‘s fourteenth effort was the rare foreign film that finds recognition among regular Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay and a nomination for Best Director. An intoxicating, mysterious, and achingly felt melodrama, it chronicles four lives brought together by chance, fate, obsession and love. Two men — a nurse and a journalist — build an unlikely friendship when taking care of two women they love who are in comas, one a bullfighter gored in action (Rosario Flores) the other a young ballet student (a ravishingly beautiful Leonor Watling) crippled by a car accident. Time feels fluid as past, present and future moments bleed into one another, falling to an unpredictable, almost mystically tragic conclusion. Impossibly romantic, sensually tactile, intricate and mature, it may be Almodóvar’s unimpeachable masterpiece. The melancholy showstopping Cataeno Veloso song, just after the first act, represents the film well, producing goose bumps and stealing your breath away.” – indieWIRE
7. CHICAGO
130 LISTS | 19 TOP SPOTS Rob Marshall | 113 mins | Comedy/Crime/Musical Renée Zellweger | Catherine Zeta-Jones | Richard Gere | Taye Diggs
“There may never be a musical to rival the great days of “Singin’ in the Rain,” and “Top Hat.” But Rob Marshall’s movie, an inspired, breathtaking adaptation of the Broadway musical (co-created by Bob Fosse), sure brings you close to that feeling. A perfect union of stage and cinematic choreography, with great performances by Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere, this is the funnest, smartest movie musical since “Cabaret.” (“Moulin Rouge” was brilliant but handicapped by its leading performers.) I won’t be a bit surprised to see this movie win big around Oscar time.” – Desson Howe, Washington Post
6. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
137 LISTS | 19 TOP SPOTS Peter Jackson | 167 mins | Adventure/Drama/Fantasy Leonardo DiCaprio | Cameron Diaz | Daniel Day-Lewis | Jim Broadbent
“The Two Towers: Part two of the trilogy was even grander and more imaginative than the triumphant first episode. It is the most difficult of the three films, because it starts and ends in the middle of a long story, but director Peter Jackson again has captured a magical world, and he has presented it with the epic scope and big-screen excitement that it merits. Bonus marks for creating computer-generated characters that we care about.” – Jay Stone, Ottawa Citizen
5. GANGS OF NEW YORK
142 LISTS | 19 TOP SPOTS Martin Scorsese | 167 mins | Crime/Drama Leonardo DiCaprio | Cameron Diaz | Daniel Day-Lewis | Jim Broadbent
“A landmark film from Martin Scorsese, who turns a tale of immigrant gangs in the 1860s into a hot-blooded epic for the ages. Ignore the love fluff with Cameron Diaz; Leonardo DiCaprio and a stupendous Daniel Day-Lewis bring history to raw life. No one dares more than Scorsese. Watch him fly.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
4. ABOUT SCHMIDT
147 LISTS | 16 TOP SPOTS Alexander Payne | 125 mins | Comedy/Drama Jack Nicholson | Hope Davis | Dermot Mulroney | Kathy Bates
“Of all the good movies that unspooled this year, the one that moved me most celebrated the constricted life of an average Midwestern retired insurance actuary. Although About Schmidt is, in a way, a social satire, and in some places even a comedy, at its core it’s a bracing paean to a certain kind of American Everyman resilient enough to deserve a parade. Warren Schmidt isn’t a hero; no member of the Greatest Generation ever looked so indistinguishable from the knickknacks and wallpaper around him. “Don’t dillydally!” Schmidt is admonished by his up-and-at-‘em wife – and Jack Nicholson, in one of the best roles of his career – doesn’t have to be told twice. The actor, in his 60s, plays a man in his 60s with a weary dignity that, like Schmidt’s astonishing comb-over doesn’t get dislodged even when he is splayed and jiggling hilariously on a water bed. And as the pensioner takes to the open roads, driving his Winnebago from Omaha to Denver to visit his resentful grown daughter, Nicholson never lets us forget Schmidt’s basic, bewildered decency. Alexander Payne’s great handmade American beauty, a comedy of national character assembled from hundreds of acutely observed details of national mannerisms, expands into something much bigger and more important than a quirky follow-up to Election from a bard of Omaha: It becomes a specimen of personal moviemaking at its most accomplished.” – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
3. ADAPTATION
184 LISTS | 19 TOP SPOTS Spike Jonze | 115 mins | Comedy/Drama Nicolas Cage | Meryl Streep | Chris Cooper | Tilda Swinton
“The real-life Charlie Kaufman pares The Orchid Thief down to its most important elements and contemplates what would have happened had Susan Orlean and John Laroche become lovers. The wackiness with which Orlean and Laroche chase after the Kaufman brothers invokes subjects revolting against their authors; their actions certainly aren’t too far off from the kind of behavior that drove countless hunters and explorers to their deaths in search of elusive orchids. The film’s Hollywood ending is effective not only because it’s deliriously self-conscious but because it truly feels like a natural extension of everything that transpires prior. Kaufman rightfully believes that these kinds of Hollywood endings have to be earned. Adaptation. makes for a very rocky experience but watching it evolve into something profound, if not entirely complete, is certainly beautiful to behold.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
2. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
190 LISTS | 23 TOP SPOTS Alfonso Cuarón | 106 mins | Drama Maribel Verdú | Gael García Bernal | Daniel Giménez Cacho | Ana López Mercado
“Part penetrating drama, part randy sex comedy, Alfonso Cuarón’s road trip fantasy Y Tu Mamá También was a blast of sheer liberation the likes of which is rarely, if ever, seen in films from our country. Much was made about the volume of all-clothes-barred sex scenes, but the film isn’t merely an excuse to stage the down-and-dirty escapades of its two horny teenage heroes (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna). Cuarón instead probes into the emotions masked by youthful carnal pursuits of the opposite sex, revealing a lot of bumpy truths in the journey from adolescence to adulthood that films like American Pie wouldn’t know what to do with. The film begins with an infectious jubilance but winds up at a merciless crossroads of confusion and shame.” – Chuck Rudolph, Slant Magazine
1. FAR FROM HEAVEN
252 LISTS | 44 TOP SPOTS Todd Haynes | 107 mins | Drama Julianne Moore | Dennis Quaid | Dennis Haysbert | Patricia Clarkson
“From the earliest days of Hollywood moviemakers have tried to re-create the past on film. The beauty, and genius, of Todd Haynes’ daydream of a 1950s Hollywood soap opera is the way that it re-creates the synthetic glories of the movie past, only to turn them into a universal canvas of hidden romantic longing. Haynes, in an act of technical and imaginative audacity, conjures the domestic hothouse world of director Douglas Sirk down to the last exquisitely too-perfect autumn leaf and cocktail-noir camera angle. Yet it isn’t just the candied retro look of Far From Heaven that is brought off with such nimble virtuosity; so is its rapturous atmosphere of retro passion. Playing characters who are trapped, without knowing it, in a world that insists on straightening every last kink of romantic craving, Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, and Dennis Haysbert turn their wholesome dialogue into pure poetry, a conduit for emotions too forbidden to be expressed. Haynes embraces the fakery of old Hollywood, but he loves its sincerity, too. As you watch Far From Heaven, the movie seems to keep asking whether this lavishly repressed landscape of ‘50s suburban artifice could possibly be our world as well. The answer, of course, is that it is and always will be – as long as decorum fights desire, and as long as our dreams of fulfillment remain inseparable from the movies that helped shape them.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Full Top 50:
| R | Film | L | #1 | AR | L% | #1% | TCL | TCL1 | TCL% | TCL1% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Far From Heaven | 252 | 44 | 3.8 | 59% | 13% | 157 | 26 | 59% | 12% |
| 2 | Y Tu Mama Tambien | 190 | 23 | 4.3 | 45% | 7% | 114 | 19 | 43% | 9% |
| 3 | Adaptation | 184 | 19 | 4.2 | 43% | 6% | 112 | 12 | 42% | 6% |
| 4 | About Schmidt | 147 | 16 | 4.0 | 35% | 5% | 85 | 11 | 32% | 5% |
| 5 | Gangs of New York | 142 | 19 | 4.5 | 33% | 6% | 85 | 13 | 32% | 6% |
| 6 | Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | 137 | 19 | 4.1 | 32% | 6% | 79 | 8 | 30% | 4% |
| 7 | Chicago | 130 | 19 | 4.4 | 31% | 6% | 66 | 10 | 25% | 5% |
| 8 | Talk to Her | 122 | 13 | 4.1 | 29% | 4% | 84 | 9 | 32% | 4% |
| 9 | Punch-Drunk Love | 117 | 10 | 4.6 | 28% | 3% | 71 | 7 | 27% | 3% |
| 10 | Spirited Away | 110 | 11 | 4.3 | 26% | 3% | 85 | 11 | 32% | 5% |
| 11 | The Pianist | 108 | 11 | 4.3 | 25% | 3% | 71 | 7 | 27% | 3% |
| 12 | Bowling For Columbine | 98 | 5 | 4.9 | 23% | 1% | 58 | 1 | 22% | 0% |
| 13 | Minority Report | 90 | 6 | 4.4 | 21% | 2% | 59 | 6 | 22% | 3% |
| 14 | The Hours | 87 | 11 | 5.0 | 20% | 3% | 49 | 4 | 18% | 2% |
| 15 | Road To Perdition | 82 | 6 | 4.6 | 19% | 2% | 40 | 2 | 15% | 1% |
| 16 | Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner | 77 | 7 | 4.0 | 18% | 2% | 54 | 4 | 20% | 2% |
| 17 | Catch Me If You Can | 70 | 1 | 5.3 | 17% | 0% | 35 | 0 | 13% | 0% |
| 18 | About a Boy | 68 | 1 | 5.5 | 16% | 0% | 42 | 1 | 16% | 0% |
| 19 | Bloody Sunday | 56 | 6 | 4.9 | 13% | 2% | 34 | 4 | 13% | 2% |
| 20 | Time Out | 51 | 4 | 4.5 | 12% | 1% | 43 | 3 | 16% | 1% |
| 21 | Russian Ark | 54 | 6 | 3.4 | 12% | 2% | 40 | 5 | 15% | 2% |
| 22 | Rabbit-Proof Fence | 50 | 2 | 5.9 | 12% | 1% | 30 | 2 | 11% | 1% |
| 23 | Monsoon Wedding | 48 | 3 | 5.7 | 11% | 1% | 32 | 3 | 12% | 1% |
| 24 | Igby Goes Down | 46 | 1 | 5.1 | 11% | 0% | 28 | 1 | 11% | 0% |
| 25 | 24 Hour Party People | 44 | 0 | 6.1 | 10% | 0% | 31 | 0 | 12% | 0% |
| 26 | The Quiet American | 44 | 2 | 6.4 | 10% | 1% | 28 | 1 | 11% | 0% |
| 27 | Frida | 42 | 2 | 5.3 | 10% | 1% | 22 | 1 | 8% | 0% |
| 28 | Spider-Man | 39 | 0 | 6.3 | 9% | 0% | 26 | 0 | 10% | 0% |
| 29 | Spider | 44 | 10 | 4.1 | 9% | 2% | 33 | 6 | 12% | 3% |
| 30 | 25th Hour | 39 | 6 | 5.1 | 9% | 2% | 25 | 4 | 9% | 2% |
| 31 | The Piano Teacher | 38 | 2 | 4.9 | 9% | 1% | 28 | 1 | 11% | 0% |
| 32 | The Kid Stays in the Picture | 36 | 1 | 6.1 | 8% | 0% | 20 | 1 | 8% | 0% |
| 33 | Sunshine State | 34 | 1 | 5.2 | 8% | 0% | 26 | 1 | 10% | 0% |
| 34 | What Time Is It There? | 33 | 3 | 5.9 | 8% | 1% | 27 | 2 | 10% | 1% |
| 35 | Insomnia | 33 | 0 | 5.3 | 8% | 0% | 16 | 0 | 6% | 0% |
| 36 | Morvern Callar | 34 | 1 | 5.8 | 8% | 0% | 31 | 1 | 12% | 0% |
| 37 | Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind | 33 | 0 | 5.5 | 8% | 0% | 21 | 0 | 8% | 0% |
| 38 | Lovely & Amazing | 31 | 0 | 5.4 | 7% | 0% | 22 | 0 | 8% | 0% |
| 39 | Late Marriage | 30 | 1 | 5.8 | 7% | 0% | 21 | 1 | 8% | 0% |
| 40 | 8 Mile | 28 | 0 | 6.0 | 7% | 0% | 13 | 0 | 5% | 0% |
| 41 | Thirteen Conversations About One Thing | 27 | 0 | 5.3 | 6% | 0% | 18 | 0 | 7% | 0% |
| 42 | Signs | 26 | 6 | 5.7 | 6% | 2% | 12 | 1 | 5% | 0% |
| 43 | Femme Fatale | 25 | 2 | 5.9 | 6% | 1% | 21 | 2 | 8% | 1% |
| 44 | Antwone Fisher | 24 | 0 | 5.8 | 6% | 0% | 12 | 0 | 5% | 0% |
| 45 | One Hour Photo | 23 | 1 | 6.6 | 5% | 0% | 14 | 0 | 5% | 0% |
| 46 | My Big Fat Greek Wedding | 22 | 3 | 5.0 | 5% | 1% | 6 | 0 | 2% | 0% |
| 47 | The Rookie | 22 | 0 | 5.8 | 5% | 0% | 10 | 0 | 4% | 0% |
| 47 | Frailty | 22 | 0 | 6.9 | 5% | 0% | 10 | 0 | 4% | 0% |
| 49 | All or Nothing | 22 | 1 | 5.3 | 5% | 0% | 17 | 0 | 6% | 0% |
| 50 | Standing in the Shadow of Motown | 21 | 0 | 6.4 | 5% | 0% | 10 | 0 | 4% | 0% |
Lists Included 424 | Top Critics’ Lists Included 266
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