Jonathan Rosenbaum’s 1000 Essential Films: 2004-present
The following is contributed by Allan Bairstow, who has collected Jonathan Rosenbaum’s end-of-year and -decade lists since the publication of Essential Cinema in 2004.
Below are Rosenbaum's 171 favorite films from 2004-present':
2004
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Mooladé (Sembene)
The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin)
Before Sunset (Linklater)
Young Adam (Mackenzie)
Coffee and Cigarettes (Jarmusch)
Springtime in a Small Town (Zhuangzhuang)
2005
The World (Jia Zhang-Ke)
Not on the Lips (Resnais)
History of Violence (Cronenberg)
Tropical Malady (Apitachatpong)
Howls Moving Castle (Myazaki)
Me, You and Everyone We Know (July)
Yes (Potter)
Capote (Miller)
Broken Flowers (Jarmusch)
The Squid and the Whale (Baumbach)
2046 (Wong)
Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai)
The Girl From Monday (Hartley)
Bamako (Sissako)
Ten Skies (Benning)
2006
Three Times (Hou)
Café Limiere (Hou)
The Illusionist (Burger)
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (TL Jones)
Ask the Dust (Towne)
Hollywoodland (Coulter)
Fast Food Nation (Linklater)
The War Tapes (Scranton)
Iraq in Fragments (Longley)
Find me Guilty (Lumet)
Half Nelson (Fleck)
The Power of Nightmares (Curtis)
2007
In the Valley of Elah (Haggis)
Honeydripper (Sayles)
I’m Not There (Haynes)
Ratatouille (Bird)
Private Fears in Public Places -Cœurs-(Resnais)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik)
The Dead Girl (Moncreiff)
Away From Her (Polley)
Offside (Panahi)
Margot at the Wedding (Baumbach)
Starting Out in the Evening (Wagner)
Letters From Iwo Jima (Eastwood)
Warsaw Bridge (Portabella)
My Dad is 100 Years Old (Maddin)
Bobby (Estevez)
2008
24 City (Jia Zhang-Ke)
Momma’s Man (Jacobs)
Of Time and the City (Davies)
The Order of Myths (Brown)
The Beaches of Agnes (Varda)
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (Gianvito)
RR (Benning)
The Silence Before Bach (Portabella)
Trouble the Water (Deal/Lessin)
2009
The Sun (Sokhurov)
Me and Orson Welles (Linklater)
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (Gilliam)
Merde (Carax)
The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)
The Last Station (Hoffman)
Bright Star (Campion)
2010
Wild Grass -Les Herbes Folles- (Resnais)
Vincere (Bellochio)
Change Rien (Costa)
The Art of the Steal (Sobol)
Carlos (Assayas)
Chloe (Egoyan)
Greenberg (Baumbach)
Ghost (Polanski)
The Social Network (Fincher)
Winter’s Bone (Granik)
2011
Poetry (Dong)
Quattro Volte (Frammartino)
The Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz)
Dangerous Method (Cronenberg)
Terri (Jacobs)
The Road to Nowhere (Hellman)
Hugo (Scorsese)
Putty Hill (Porter)
Skin I Live in (Almodovar)
Uncle Boonmee Who Recalls His Past Lives (Apitachatpong)
Certified Copy (Kiarostami)
2012
Turin Horse (Tarr)
Holy Motors (Carax)
The Kid with the Bike (Dardennes)
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet - Vous N’Avez Encore Rien (Resnais)
The Deep Blue Sea (Davies)
Bernie (Linklater)
Unforgivable (Techine)
Keyhole (Maddin)
The Forgotten Space (Seculas/Burch)
Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson W)
The Hunter (Pitts)
Far From Afghanistan (Gianvito)
2013
Fruitvale Station (Cougler)
Gloria (Lelio)
Hannah Arendt (Von trotta)
Kill Your darlings (Krokidas)
Last of the Unjust (Lanzman)
Museum Hours (Cohen)
Stories We Tell (Polley)
Night Across the Street (Ruiz)
The Unspeakable Act (Salitt)
2014 *
*Bairstow notes that there is no extant list for 2014, but he includes films that were noted by Rosenbaum as being significant that year.
Boyhood (Linklater)
Under the Skin (Glazer)
Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson)
Two Days, One Night (Dardennes)
2015
Son of Saul (Nemes)
Jauja (Alonso)
Ex-Machina (Garland)
I, Dalio (Rappaport)
Journey to the West (Tsai)
2016
Paterson (Jarmusch)
Everybody Wants Some (Linklater)
Moonlight (Jenkins)
Arrival (Villeneuve)
The Love Witch (Biller)
Indignation (Schamus)
Hell or High Water (Mackenzie)
Certain Women (Reichardt)
LaLa Land (Chazelle)
Miles Ahead (Cheadle)
2017
The Phantom Thread (Anderson PT)
Downsizing (Payne)
Streetscapes (Holz)
Boom For Real (Sara Driver)
Marjorie Prime (Almereyda)
2018
A Bread Factory (Wang)
Image Book (Godard)
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun (Wilkerson)
Roma (Cuaron)
The Eye was in the Tomb (Galibert-Laîné )
2019
Vitalina Varela (Costa)
Transit (Petzold)
It must be Heaven (Suleiman)
Conrad Veidt (Rappaport)
Where's My Roy Cohn (Tyrncover)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Jenkins)
Ad Astra (Gray)
Flannery (Coffman/Bosco)
The Souvenir (Hogg)
2020
An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo)
Dark Waters (Haynes)
Little Women (Gerwig)
Motherless Brooklyn (Norton)
Last year in Dachau (Rappaport)
Bottled Songs -My Crush was a Superstar (Galibert-Laîné /Lee)
Cenote (Oda)
First Cow (Reichardt)
France Against the Robots (Straub)
Her Socialist Smile (Gianvito)
MLK/FBI (Pollard)
Schoolgirls -Las Ninas (Palarmero)
Women ascending to Man ( Nouri)
2021
Tiong Bahru Social Club (Tan Bee Thiam)
Martin und Hans (Rappaport)
The Taking (O. Phillipe)
John Farrow - Man in the Shadows (Rappaport)
While We Are Here -Enquanto enstamos aqui- (Campolina/ Pretti)
Letters From the End of the World- (Bistrik 7)
Uncut Gems (Safdie/Safdie)
Cry Macho (Eastwood)
Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn - Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc (Jude)
2022
The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh)
Memoria (Apitchatpong)
Men (Garland)
Potemkinisti (Jude)
American -An Odyssey to 1947 (Wu)
2023
Barbie (Gerwig)
Afire (Petzold)
Daughter of Fire (Costa)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese)
The Master Gardner (Schrader)
No Bears (Panahi)
Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Jude)
Asteroid City (Anderson W)
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Anderson W)
2024*
*There is no list found for 2024.