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PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 100 Favorite Films Across 100 Years




    Raise your hand if you honestly thought we'd ever get here.
  
   It's the truth: the number of posts from Films and Feelings has now reached the triple digits. The current tally stands at 41 essays, 41 reviews, 6 Professor's Picks (counting this one), 10 monthly reports of The Great Movie Conquest of 2022, and 2 Years in Review. This is the kind of threshold that generally merits some sort of celebration or commemoration, so why not do something special today? To celebrate one hundred posts, I've assembled a list of my favorite film for each year over the last one hundred years. 

    Let me alleviate some of your fears here and now: this will be mostly a visual experience. It far exceeds my writing prowess to be able to give 100 unique explanations for why specifically I enjoy each movie. And for many of these films, true expression of what it means to me escapes my ability anyhow. In cases where I have already written extensively about a given film, though, I'll link to the relevant essay. 

    Many film enthusiasts really care about the distinction between "best" and "favorite." I myself don't love to get too deep into this marsh. I've long felt that storytelling's fundamental purpose is to help reconcile the conflicts of the human heart, and so it doesn't feel sacrilegious for me to say that a large percentage of a film's success should be measured by whether its audience responds to it. The corollary is also true: if a film's artists take the time to do their job well, then the human heart will be naturally more receptive to the final product. 

    While there's a lot of overlap between how I designate either class, I'll say that for this list I leaned towards "film that I found most meaningful and/or enjoyable," as opposed to "film that I personally feel best pushes forth the boundaries of the film medium." For most of this list, though, those two don't really compete. (Except for maybe 1976's selection. You'll see.)

   Yes, most years offer more than simply a single film worth celebrating (some especially competitive years include 1946, 1952, 1965, 1994, 2004, and 2015), but I quickly shot down the inclusion of an honorable mentions for each year. This list is already interminably long.

    Anyways, I hope you see some favorites on this list. I hope others surprise you. I hope you'll find a few films you haven't gotten around to yet, and maybe some you've never even heard of, and find the time to check them out. Here we go ... 

[Updated March 2026]
   


1923 - Safety Last - Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor 



1924 The Navigator - Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton




1925 His People - Edward Sloman



1926 3 Bad Men - John Ford



1927 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - F.W. Murnau 




1928 The Docks of New York - Josef von Sternberg




1929 Lucky Star - Frank Borzage




1930 City Girl - F.W. Murnau




1931 City Lights - Charlie Chaplin



1932 The Most Dangerous Game - Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack




1933 The Gold Diggers of 1933 - Mervyn Leroy




1934 It Happened One Night - Frank Capra




1935 Naughty Marietta - Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke 





1936 Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin





1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen 




1938 Le Quai des Brumes "Port of Shadows" - Marcel Carné 





1939 Gone with the Wind - Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood




1940 The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin 





1941 The Wolf Man - George Waggner 





1942 Casablanca - Michael Curtiz 




1943 The More the Merrier - George Stevens






1944 Meet Me in St. Louis - Vincente Minelli 





1945 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Elia Kazan 





1946 It's a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra




1947 It Happened on 5th Avenue - Roy Del Ruth 






1948 Romance on the High Seas - Michael Curtiz





1949 Jour de Fête - Jacques Tati





1950 Sunset Boulevard - Billy Wilder





1951 People Will Talk - Joseph L. Mankiewicz





1952 Singin' in the Rain - Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly




1953 From Here to Eternity - Fred Zinneman




1954 On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan




1955 The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton




1956 The Searchers - John Ford




1957 Le Notti di Cabiria "Nights of Cabiria" - Federico Fellini 





1958 Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock




1959 Les Quatre Cents Coups "The 400 Blows" - Francois Truffaut 






1960 The Apartment - Billy Wilder




1961 King of Kings - Nicholas Ray




1962 Pressure Point - Hubert Cornfield




1963 The Birds - Alfred Hitchcock





1964 Mary Poppins - Robert Stevenson





1965 A Patch of Blue - Guy Green


A Patch of Blue: Sidney Poitier, Representation, and The Virtue of Choice


1966 Ostre Sledované Vlaky "Closely Watched Trains" - Jiří Menzel






1967 The Jungle Book - Wolfgang Reitherman 





1968 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Robert Ellis Miller




1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - George Roy Hill




1970 Catch 22 - Mike Nichols





1971 Walkabout - Nicolas Roeg




1972 Butterflies are Free - Milton Katselas





1973 The Last Detail - Hal Ashby




1974 Sugarland Express- Steven Spielberg




1975 Jaws - Steven Spielberg


JAWS: The Father of All Blockbusters Turns 50


1976 Grizzly - William Girdler 




1977 The Goodbye Girl - Herbert Ross





1978 Watership Down - Martin Rosen




1979 Kramer vs Kramer - Robert Benton




1980 Ordinary People - Robert Redford





1981 Clash of the Titans - Desmond Davis




1982 The Plague Dogs - Martin Rosen




1983 Tender Mercies - Bruce Beresford




1984 The Terminator - James Cameron 




1985 The Breakfast Club - John Hughes




1986 Stand By Me - Rob Reiner




1987 Broadcast News - James L. Brooks




1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Robert Zemeckis 





1989 The Little Mermaid - Ron Clements, John Musker




1990 Dances with Wolves - Kevin Costner




1991 Beauty and the Beast - Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale





1992 Scent of a Woman - Martin Brest




1993 Jurassic Park - Steven Spielberg




1994 Leon: The Professional - Luc Besson





1995 While You Were Sleeping - Jon Turteltaub




1996 Kolya - Jan Svěrák






1997 Titanic - James Cameron




1998 The Prince of Egypt - Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells




1999 The Iron Giant - Brad Bird




2000 Finding Forrester - Gus Van Sant 




2001 Moulin Rouge! - Baz Luhrmann 


Moulin Rouge!: Musicals Chasing Authenticity


2002 Minority Report - Steven Spielberg




2003 Finding Nemo - Andrew Stanton




2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Michel Gondry




2005 King Kong - Peter Jackson 




2006 El Laberinto del Fauno "Pan's Labyrinth" - Guillermo del Toro




2007 Ratatouille - Brad Bird




2008 Doubt - John Patrick Shanley




2009 Avatar - James Cameron


Avatar vs Pop Culture


2010 Tangled - Nathan Greno, Byron Howard




2011 The Descendants - Alexander Payne




2012 Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell 




2013 The Way, Way Back - Jim Rash, Nat Faxon




2014 Guardians of the Galaxy - James Gunn




2015 Bakemono no Ko "The Boy and the Beast" - Mamoru Hosada



2016 Passengers - Morten Tyldum 




2017 The Greatest Showman - Michael Gracey




2018 A Quiet Place - John Krasinski 


A Quiet Place: Scaredy-Cats Taking Back the Horror Movie



2019 Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach




2020 Onward - Dan Scanlon





2021 In the Heights - John M. Chu



2022 The Banshees of Inisherin - Martin McDonagh


The Banshees of Inisherin - The Death Knell of Male Friendship


    Thanks as always for reading my work. 100 posts more would still not be nearly space enough for me to articulate all that film has given to me, and to us. I don't know for certain how far I'll take this thing, but I think there's more ink in the pen. 

                --The Professor






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