#seen 2016

Read

240. An Ethiopian Romance by Heliodorus of Emesa

241. The Rise of Rome by Anthony Everitt

242. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

243. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

244. A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy

245. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

246. The Song of the Wave and Other Poems by George Cabot Lodge

247. Grass for My Pillow by Saiichi Maruya

248. The Obscene Madame D by Hilda Hilst

249. The Inverted World by Christopher Priest

Seen

218. Lost: Season 6 (2010)

219. The Toll of the Sea (1922/Chester M. Franklin)

220. The River Niger (1976/Krishna Shah)

221. To Each His Own (1946/Mitchell Leisen)

222. Strawberry and Chocolate (1993/Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)

223. Logan (2017/James Mangold)

224. A Welcome to Britain (1943/Anthony Asquith, Burgess Meredith)

225. Ruby Sparks (2012/Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)

Heard

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A. (Dancing in the Dark)

Lesley Gore Sings of Mixed-Up Hearts (You Don't Own Me)

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (Moonage Daydream)

Jimmy Dorsey - Dixie by Dorsey (Struttin' With Some Barbecue)

Ashkenazy / Zukerman / Harrel - Schubert: Piano Trio No. 1

Fugazi - Red Medicine (Target)

Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express (Showroom Dummies)

Ashkenazy / Zukerman / Harrel - Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2

After a decade of dedicating the better part of my attention to reading I felt a long overdue need to catch up with my movie watching this year. 1500 films later I can now say I have seen at least 40 films from every year since 1930 and that I will never watch 1500 movies in a year again (also a good way to gain 15 pounds.) The lion's share of my viewing deficit being in the decades before my birth accounts for decidedly paean to yesteryear bent of 2016′s “Best of” list:

Top 10 in Bold

Anglo-American Cinema

7th Heaven (1927/Frank Borzage)

The Big Parade (1925/King Vidor)

Body and Soul (1947/Robert Rossen)

The Champ (1931/King Vidor)

Clash by Night (1952/Fritz Lang)

Deep End (1970/Jerzy Skolimowski)

Edvard Munch (1974/Peter Watkins)

The Furies (1950/Anthony Mann)

Gun Crazy (1950/Joseph H. Lewis)

Hamlet (1948/Laurence Olivier)

Hellzapoppin’ (1941/H.C. Potter)

The Hill (1965/Sidney Lumet)

Hobson’s Choice (1954/David Lean)

Ice Cold in Alex (1958/J. Lee Thompson)

The Last Command (1928/Josef von Sternberg)

Love Me Tonight (1932/Rouben Mamoulian)

The Mortal Storm (1940/Frank Borzage)

My Ain Folk (1973/Bill Douglas)

Outcast of the Islands (1951/Carol Reed)

Providence (1977/Alain Resnais)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925/Rupert Julian)

A Raisin in the Sun (1961/Daniel Petrie)

Shanghai Express (1932/Josef von Sternberg)

The Snake Pit (1948/Anatole Litvak)

Sons and Lovers (1960/Jack Cardiff)

The Thief of Bagdad (1924/Raoul Walsh)

The Train (1964/John Frankenheimer)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945/Elia Kazan)

Twentieth Century (1934/Howard Hawks)

The Visit (1964/Bernhard Wicki)

When the Wind Blows (1986/Jimmy T. Murakami)

Wild River (1960/Elia Kazan)

The Winslow Boy (1948/Anthony Asquith)

Yellow Sky (1948/William A. Wellman)

Zulu (1964/Cy Endfield)

Continental Cinema

Adelheid (1970/Frantisek Vlácil)

Angst (1983/Gerald Kargl)

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972/Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Come and See (1985/Elem Klimov)

Comradeship (1931/Georg Wilhelm Pabst)

The Doll (1919/Ernst Lubitsch)

Don Camillo (1952/Julien Duvivier)

The Ear (1990/Karel Kachyna)

The Fifth Seal (1976/Zoltán Fábri)

Le Grand Amour (1969/Pierre Étaix)

In a Year with 13 Moons (1978/Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Kanal (1957/Andrzej Wajda)

Letter Never Sent (1959/Mikhail Kalatozov)

Liebelei (1933/Max Ophüls)

The Match Factory Girl (1990/Aki Kaurismäki)

Les Misérables (1934/Raymond Bernard)

The Nights of Cabiria (1957/Federico Fellini)

Pictures of the Old World (1972/Dusan Hanák)

Shoeshine (1946/Vittorio De Sica)

Soldier of Orange (1977/Paul Verhoeven)

Under the Bridges (1946/Helmut Käutner)

Who’s Singin’ Over There? (1980/Slobodan Sijan)

Witchhammer (1970/Otakar Vávra)

Asian Cinema

The Ballad of Narayama (1958/Keisuke Kinoshita)

Death by Hanging (1968/Nagisa Ôshima)

Floating Clouds (1955/Mikio Naruse)

I Was Born, But… (1932/Yasujirô Ozu)

The Life of Oharu (1952/Kenji Mizoguchi)

Repast (1951/Mikio Naruse)

Salaam Bombay! (1988/Mira Nair)

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (1935/Sadao Yamanaka)

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939/Kenji Mizoguchi)

Street of Shame (1956/Kenji Mizoguchi)

There Was a Father (1942/Yasujirô Ozu)

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954/Keisuke Kinoshita)