1995 Top Ten List

Se7en (David Fincher)

Dadetown (Russ Hexter)

Safe (Todd Haynes)

Toy Story (John Lasseter)

Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam)

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz)

Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach)

From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport)

Land and Freedom (Ken Loach)

Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater)

Additional 1995 Films By Rating

Heat (Michael Mann)

La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol)

Crimson Tide (Tony Scott)

Apollo 13 (Ron Howard)

Richard III (Richard Loncraine)

To Die For (Gus Van Sant)

Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins)

Underground (Emir Kusturica)

Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin)

Babe (Chris Noonan)

The Neon Bible (Terence Davies)

The Brady Bunch Movie (Betty Thomas)

Fallen Angels (Wong Kar Wai)

The Addiction (Abel Ferrara)

Casino (Martin Scorsese)

Party Girl (Daisy von Scherler Mayer)

Clueless (Amy Heckerling)

Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii)

Smoke (Wayne Wang)

Flirt (Hal Hartley)

Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung)

Dolores Claiborne (Taylor Hackford)

The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer)

The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi)

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin | White Mask (Isaac Julien)

Bad Boys (Michael Bay)

Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow)

Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven)

Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)

Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondô)

The Basketball Diaries (Scott Kalvert)

Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis)

The Star Maker (Giuseppe Tornatore)

Carl Th. Dreyer—My Métier (Torben Skjødt Jensen)

Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni)

Species (Roger Donaldson)

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti)

At the time I wrote my 1995 top list in the form of a column.

For archival purposes, I file everything by the year it had its world premiere. Many of these films will have been commercially released in the U.S. a year or two later, so my lists won’t always match up with other folks’ lists.

Ratings are on a needlessly precise 100-point scale.

Films I haven’t yet rated on that scale are marked with if I currently think they belong in my top ten. These films are subject to being shifted around or yanked altogether at any moment, after I revisit them and they get a numeral.

Seen but currently unrated (and not presumptively among my top 10): American Job (C. Smith); The American President (Reiner); Angels and Insects (Haas); Anne Frank Remembered (Blair); Antonia's Line (Gorris); Art for Teachers of Children (Montgomery); Augustin (Fontaine); An Awfully Big Adventure (Newell); The Babysitter (Ferland); Bang (Ash); The Basketball Diaries (Kalvert); Batman Forever (Schumacher); Beyond Rangoon (Boorman); The Blue Villa (Robbe-Grillet & De Clercq); Blush (Li); Braveheart (Gibson); The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood); Brothers in Trouble (Prasad); The Brothers McMullen (Burns); Butterfly Kiss (Winterbottom); Bye-Bye (Dridi); Carrington (Hampton); The Celluloid Closet (Epstein & Friedman); Cinema of Unease (Neill & Rymer); Circle of Friends (O'Connor); The City of Lost Children (Jeunet & Caro); Clockers (S. Lee); Cold Comfort Farm (Schlesinger); Cold Fever (Fridriksson); The Convent (De Oliveira); Copycat (Amiel); Cry, the Beloved Country (Roodt); Dead Presidents (Hughes Brothers); Denise Calls Up (Salwen); Desolation Angels (McCann); Desperado (Rodriguez); Die Hard With a Vengeance (McTiernan); Don Juan DeMarco (Leven); Don't Forget You're Going to Die (Beauvois); The Doom Generation (Araki); Dust of Life (Bouchareh); Eden Valley (no director credited); The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain (Monger); Flamenco (Saura); The Flower of My Secret (Almodóvar); Forgotten Silver (Jackson); Frankie Starlight (Lindsay-Hogg); French Twist (Balasko); Funny Bones (Chelsom); The Gate of Heavenly Peace (Hinton & Gordon); Georgia (Grosbard); Get Shorty (Sonnenfeld); Good Men, Good Women (Hou); Guantanamera (Gutiérrez Alea & Carlos Tabio); Guimba the Tyrant (Sissoko); Habit (Fessenden); Heavy (Mangold); Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (Broomfield); How to Make an American Quilt (Moorhouse); I Can't Sleep (Denis); Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (Brothers Quay); The Keeper (Brewster; Keïta! The Voice of the Griot (Kouyaté); Kids (Clark); The King of Masks (Wu); Kiss of Death (Schroeder); Le Garçu (Pialat); Les Misérables (Lelouch); A Little Princess (Cuarón); Living in Oblivion (DiCillo); Lotto Land (Rubino); Lumière and Company (various); Maborosi (Kore-eda); Mallrats (K. Smith); Man of the Year (Shafer); Margaret's Museum (Ransen); Miami Rhapsody (Frankel); A Midwinter's Tale (Branagh); Mighty Aphrodite (Allen); Mondo (Gatlif); A Mongolian Tale (Xie); Mouth to Mouth (Gómez Pereira); Murder in the First (Rocco); The Muslim (Khotinenko); My Mother's Courage (Verhoeven); Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (Sautet); New Jersey Drive (Gomez); Nico Icon (Ofteringer); Nixon (Stone); Nobody Will Speak of Us When We're Dead (Díaz Yanes); Notes From Underground (Walkow); Nueba Yol (Muñiz); On the Beat (Ning); Othello (Parker); Palookaville (Taylor); A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (Scorsese & Wilson); Persuasion (Michell); Pride and Prejudice (Langton); The Prophecy (Widen); Reckless (René); Rendezvous in Paris (Rohmer); Rob Roy (Caton-Jones); Screamers (Duguay); Sense and Sensibility (A. Lee); Shanghai Triad (Zhang); A Single Girl (Jacquot); A Single Spark (Park); Sixteen-Oh-Sixty (Mainardi); Small Wonders (Miller); Someone Else's America (Paskaljevic); Sonic Outlaws (Baldwin); Sweet Nothing (Winick); Synthetic Pleasures (I. Lee); Target (Ray); Ten Benny (Bross); To Have (Or Not) (Masson); Total Eclipse (Holland); Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (Jordan & Ascher); Two Bits (Foley); Two Deaths (Roeg); Ulysses' Gaze (Angelopoulos); Under the Domim Tree (Cohen); Underneath (Soderbergh); Unzipped (Keeve); Up/Down/Fragile (Rivette); Waati (Cissé); Welcome to the Dollhouse (Solondz); When I Close My Eyes (Iwai); While You Were Sleeping (Turteltaub); The White Balloon (Panahi); Wild Bill (Hill); The Young Poisoner's Handbook (Ross)

As yet unseen: Deseret (Benning); Salaam Cinema (Makhmalbaf); Tokyo Fist (Tsukamoto)