Favorite Movie of the Year

This morning, I decided it would be fun to make a list of my favorite feature film from each calendar year starting in 1922 (the earliest year from which I've seen a feature, according to my database of every movie I've ever seen). I recognize that this is a fool's endeavor to some degree. There's no real reason to compare The Wizard of Oz and Ninotchka, say, or Beauty & the Beast and Terminator 2. All of those films are wonderful.

But I had fun doing it, so here we are. I've not saying that these are objectively the best movies from each year. Lord knows I haven't seen enough movies to make an informed statement about that. These are simply my personal favorites out of the films I've seen so far. Regardless of quality, these are my favorite. I thought about putting A Clockwork Orange for 1971, for example, but my heart wouldn't let me put anything other than Willy Wonka. Some years, obviously, were harder to choose than others. Some of them would likely be different if I sat down to do this on a different day. But for right now, here they are:

1922 - Grandma’s Boy (Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)

1923 - Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton)

1924 - Girl Shy (Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)

1925 - The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin)

1926 - Metropolis (Fritz Lang)

1927 - The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman)

1928 - I HAVE APPARENTLY SEEN NO MOVIE FROM 1928

1929 - The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)

1930 - Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman)

1931 - Frankenstein (James Whale)

1932 - Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)

1933 - Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)

1934 - The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke)

1935 - Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)

1936 - My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)

1937 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand)

1938 - The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz & William Keighley)

1939 - The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)

1940 - His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)

1941 - The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)

1942 - To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch)

1943 - Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)

1944 - Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra)

1945 - Christmas in Connecticut (Peter Godfrey)

1946 - It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)

1947 - Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)

1948 - Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)

1949 - Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)

1950 - Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder)

1951 - Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)

1952 - Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen)

1953 - Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder)

1954 - The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)

1955 - Marty (Delbert Mann)

1956 - Giant (George Stevens)

1957 - 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)

1958 - The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa)

1959 - North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)

1960 - The Apartment (Billy Wilder)

1961 - One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder)

1962 - To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)

1963 - From Russia With Love (Terence Young)

1964 - Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)

1965 - Help! (Richard Lester)

1966 - The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder)

1967 - The Firemen’s Ball (Milos Forman)

1968 - The Producers (Mel Brooks)

1969 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)

1970 - Patton (Franklin Schaffner)

1971 - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)

1972 - The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)

1973 - American Graffiti (George Lucas)

1974 - Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks)

1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman)

1976 - Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)

1977 - Annie Hall (Woody Allen)

1978 - Superman: The Movie (Richard Donner)

1979 - The Muppet Movie (James Frawley)

1980 - Airplane! (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker)

1981 - Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)

1982 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer)

1983 - A Christmas Story (Bob Clark)

1984 - Amadeus (Milos Forman)

1985 - Brazil (Terry Gilliam)

1986 - Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz)

1987 - The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner)

1988 - My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)

1989 - Say Anything (Cameron Crowe)

1990 - Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton)

1991 - Beauty & the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise)

1992 - The Muppet Christmas Carol (Brian Henson)

1993 - Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi)

1994 - The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen)

1995 - Toy Story (John Lasseter)

1996 - That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks)

1997 - Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)

1998 - Rushmore (Wes Anderson)

1999 - The Iron Giant (Brad Bird)

2000 - Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)

2001 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (Peter Jackson)

2002 - In America (Jim Sheridan)

2003 - Big Fish (Tim Burton)

2004 - The Incredibles (Brad Bird)

2005 - Thank You for Smoking (Jason Reitman)

2006 - The Prestige (Christopher Nolan)

2007 - Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)

2008 - The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)

2009 - Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

2010 - Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

2011 - Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman)

2012 - Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow)

2013 - Wadjda (Haifaa al-Mansour)

Rains is Regent!

It's August, which means it's time again for TCM's Summer Under the Stars. To celebrate, Jill at Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and Michael at ScribeHard on Film are hosting a blogathon. I'm honored to make this contribution for Claude Rains Day (Sunday, August 5).

The first time I ever saw Claude Rains must have been in his final movie, George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). It's one of my grandmother's all-time favorite movies, and she insisted on watching it every year at Easter. That film has more cameos than The Muppet Movie, but as a child I didn't recognize very many of them. (Exceptions: John Wayne because everyone knows John Wayne, Angela Lansbury and Charlton Heston also thanks to my grandma, and Telly Savalas because of, well, The Muppet Movie.)

I certainly didn't know Claude Rains, but his King Herod left a huge impression on me. He appears at the very beginning of the movie, and his bizarre, fey intensity was like nothing I'd ever seen. In church I'd been taught that King Herod hated Jesus, but Rains seems more like he welcomes the challenge. He plays the role with a constant half-smile plastered on his face, as though he's excited that there's some baby out there will someday stand up to him - after all these years, he has an upstart to destroy, and he can't even wait to do it.

What I didn't realize at the time was that Herod was essentially a reprise of a character Rains had played twenty-seven years earlier in a much better film - Prince John in William Keighley and Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood. Like Herod, John is a petulant little man who craves power. He sees hero as a threat to his power and decides to devote all of his resources to killing that hero. And Rains plays them in a very similar manner.

In all of classic film, Prince John is the closest thing we have to the more recent tradition of Classy Actors Slumming It In Comic Book Movies. I don't mean that as insult; quite the opposite. It's not necessarily Rains's best work - and it sure isn't very subtle - but he seems to be having the time of his life.

And Rains is tremendous fun for the viewer as well. Prince John doesn't actually do very much in the movie. Mostly he just instructs his minions to do things for him. But the way Rains plays him, that never gets old for him. He's on a constant, delighted power trip, and every order is like his first.

Throughout the film, Rains displays Prince John's joy in a number of sublime moments - grinning haughtily at the archery contest, eagerly ordering his men to bring Robin Hood something to eat when Robin invades the throne, gleefully telling the arrested Robin Hood that Sir Guy's treatment of him will be "Something special, I'm sure!"

Perhaps my favorite moment of his occurs about fifteen minutes into the movie, when he explains that he's seized regency power away from his brother's appointed steward, a fellow named Longchamps. "I've kicked Longchamps out!," he exclaims. Rains's voice jumps up about a half-octave on the verb 'kicked' - Prince John's been living in his brother's shadow all of his life, and now that he's finally in power he can barely contain his excitement.

Claude Rains had tremendous range - befuddled father Adam Lemp in Four Daughters couldn't be farther removed from the unsettling Dr. Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man - but many of his best roles were charming, cultured rogues. That's true of Louis Renault in Casablanca, it's true of Alex Sebastian in Notorious, and it's certainly true of Prince John in his own mind. He isn't charming at all, of course, but you can always tell that he so badly wants to be.