New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made

by The New York Times

Everyone knows that a good canon debate doesn't get interesting until you reach the realm of the top 100. But by listing the top 1,000 movies, as the editors of The New York Times have done with this fat, readable collection of reviews, you get to skip all that huffing and puffing about quality and head straight for the fun. With a little elbow room, there's space for ineffable stuff like Mr. Hulot's Holiday and The Match Factory Girl. Room, too, for the nuance-free Mrs. Doubtfire and the free-falling Die Hard (which makes it, yep, right next to Diner). Pillow Talk squeezes in just one down from The Piano. What's really new about this book, though, is that the reviews have been culled from the Times's archive--reaching back to 1931. So you can read Vincent Canby reacting to Taxi Driver in 1976, just days after first seeing it: "The steam billowing up around the manhole cover in the street is a dead giveaway. Manhattan is a thin cement lid over the entrance to hell, and the lid is full of cracks." Not bad for a guy on deadline. Bosley Crowther, who preceded Canby, fares less well, waving off Rear Window as Hitchcock's "new melodrama, " and Psycho with, "It does seem slowly paced." By contrast, Janet Maslin's more recent reviews hum and gush, unraveling the merits of Pulp Fiction and Lone Star. At collected-Shakespeare size (999 pages), the title is probably too vast for schlepping around, but go ahead, try reading just one. With plenty of international selections, including usual suspects from France (Truffaut), Italy (Fellini), and Japan (Itami), as well as some unusual ones from Brazil, Mexico, India, and Czechoslovakia, there's enough canon fodder here for at least five "Top 100" books. --Lyall Bush

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Reference, History, Journalism

Library Binding

First published October 12, 1999

About the author

The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website receives 30 million unique visitors per month.

Reviews

[Jackie "the Librarian"]

Read all the original reviews of 1000 great movies as they were published in the New York Times. You may not agree with their picks, and some of the older reviews are awfully smug, but that's the fun of this kind of book. Not all of these reviews are positive, as even they changed their minds, sometimes!
They limited their picks to movies with sound, so you won't find any Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton here. That doesn't mean you shouldn't watch them, though!
See if your favorites are included!

[Julio The Fox]

I'm a fool and fall guy for a classic movie. The fun and profit of this book is in upgrading your taste in movies and disagreeing with some of the greatest film critics who ever penned a review, Bosley Crowther, Vincent Canby, Janet Maslin and other NEW YORK TIMES eminences, on what constitutes a great film and which directors are likely to endure in film history. This compendium is unusual in that the reviews of the 1,000 best movies are all contemporary. If a movie came out in 1946, say THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, we get the review published in the TIMES. No second-guessing or "time has vindicated this film". This can be a dangerous practice, and misleading. Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO opened to terrible reviews in 1960, but today is considered, by me anyway, his masterpiece, especially compared to the Oscar Best Picture winner that year, Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. On the flip side, Bernardo Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS from 1973 was hailed for having "changed the face of an art form", yet it is little viewed, much less praised, today. Here's an infuriating item on this list. The TIMES critic hated THE GODFATHER PART II, calling it a shallow, nonsensical rehash of the original. He even profanes the one gem most critics spotted in this sequel, Robert DeNiro's performance as the young Vito Corleone; "he seems to be doing a nightclub imitation of Brando". That made me go out and watch GF II again, for the sheer pleasure. Silent films always need a rescue for modern audiences, and I'm glad THE GENERAL, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and all of early Chaplin is here. Americans require a reminder now and then that local manufactures are only a small part of global film output. The masters of foreign cinema earn their stars from the TIMES; Kurosawa, Ozu, Fellini, Herzog, Wenders, Visconti, Bergman, Truffaut, Godard and Bresson. My one complaint about this list of all-star films is that small budgets are under-represented. Where are WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS, DETOUR, GUN CRAZY, WITHNAIL AND I, and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE? Though 1,000 BEST FILMS is too high-brow I still recommend this thick volume for a launching pad into world cinema.

[John Smith]

First off this is a really good diverse list of films. I went through and read all the reviews for the films I had seen. Which is only about 1/4 of what is contained in this massive volume. Now I have a long list of great films to go through when I am stumped for something to watch.

[Bagger]

I want to watch them all :)

[Catherine Woodman]

He is a great resource when thinking about films and teaching

[Leslie]

If, like me, you love movies & lists then you will enjoy this!

[Andrew Pierce]

A great reference for any film lover that gave me lots of great suggestions, especially some foreign films that I need to catch up on!