"At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique.
She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul.
She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist.
There's something very beautiful in that.

It was worth making Véronique for that girl.
It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul.

It's worth it."
-Krzysztof Kieslowski

Yes, Krzysztof. It was bloody well worth it, and then some. Once upon a time Kieslowski opened my eyes for a certain blend of movies, and still, on this anniversary list here at Letterboxd, Kieslowski once again is the most successful director on it. I strongly suspect Kurosawa will manage to knock him down a notch for the next one, so I've chosen to celebrate Kieslowski especially for this one.

Well, lads and legs. You all know the drill by now, so without much further ado; In addition to the movie that made a fifteen year old Parisienne realize that movies actually can answer one of the big questions in life, these are the other 99 movies I care about today. They aren't the best 100 I've seen, nor the essentials or the most influential ones, and the one ranked at 3rd isn't necessarily better than the one ranked at 5th, but these are the 100 ranked somewhat according to my current esteem.

I'm looking to do this annually in late December or early January, so the next edition is estimated to be published in December 2016 or January 2017, a full year from now.

Last year's edition
2014 edition
2013 edition
50 Loved Ones (the original 2012 steppingstone)

Publisher's notes:
- Top 4 unchanged
- All top 10 movies still in top 10, although rearranged as Make Way for Tomorrow drops from 5th to 7th, and Rear Window moves up from 6th to 5th. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also drops down from 7th to 8th, and Léon drops from 8th to 10th, while M moves up from 9th to 6th and Raiders of the Lost Ark moves up from 10th to 9th
- Highest placed newcomer is L'atalante in 13th
- Highest bump is Starship Troopers moving up from 65th to 28th
- Highest top half bump is Le samouraï moving up from 27th to 22th
- Largest drop is Serenity (*) dropping out from 23rd
- Otherwise the highest placed movie on last year's list to drop all the way out is 5 Centimeters per Second from 64th
- Largest surviving drop is The Big Lebowski from 63rd to 98th

Some stats: (change from 2015-edition)

European: 30 (+3)
Asian: 23 (-1)
Animated: 9 (--)

2010s: 2 (-1)
2000s: 22 (-6)
1990s: 24 (+2)
1980s: 13 (-1)
1970s: 6 (+2)
1960s: 7 (+1)
1950s: 9 (+1)
1940s: 3 (+1)
1930s: 11 (+1)
>1930: 3 (--)

Directors with multiple entries:

3 Entries:

Krzysztof Kieslowski (2, 35 & 47)
Akira Kurosawa (11, 20 & 84)
Satoshi Kon (48, 80 & 94)

The following 8 directors have all two entries each:

Jean-Pierre Melville (18 & 22)
Alfred Hitchcock (5 & 75)
Patrice Leconte (42 & 52)
Billy Wilder (45 & 50)
Leo McCarey (7 & 91)
Ingmar Bergman (57 & 60)
Michael Curtiz (32 & 97)
Shunji Iwai (77 & 81)

2016 New Entries: (linked to my reviews)

#13 L'atalante
#16 The Cranes are Flying
#20 High and Low
#26 Un cœur en hiver
#64 Picnic at Hanging Rock
#72 Comrades: Almost a Love Story
#87 All the President's Men
#90 Ecstasy
#94 Millennium Actress
#96 Spring in a Small Town

2015-Entries revisited that survived: (linked to my reviews)[last year's placing]

#1 Lost in Translation [#1]
#18 L'armée des ombres [#17]
#46 Trust [#29]

New (re-)entries without a 2015-viewing:

None...

Drop-outs from 2015-Edition: (last years placing)

Serenity (#23), 5 Centimeters per Second (#64), Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (#85), Le conseguenze dell'amore (#86), Confessions (#87), Infernal Affairs (#88), Oldboy (#93), RoboCop (#95), A Moment to Remember (#96), It Happened One Night (#98)

As usual, in a week or so I'll publish an accompanying B-sides-list of 100 movies. Edit 1/1-'16: Now released here.

Publisher's words:

(*) During my re-watch of Firefly and Serenity this year, I came to understand that my love for the movie was so linked to my love for the TV-show that I found it impossible to judge the movie on its own. As such I decided to 'demote' Serenity to the annual B-sides list, so it dropping out of this list should in no way be seen as my love for it diminishing. Browncoat for life.

Otherwise, 2015 has been a quiet year. I think I would have to go back at least a decade to find a year when I watch less movies, but at least the annual 30 Countries-challenge gave me a handful of great experiences. I was looking to broaden my horizon in Japan this year, but then I discovered Claude Sautet during the 30 Countries-challenge, and I was soon lost in him as well as the rest of France instead.

As a result I figure I'll always look back at 2015 as the year I discovered Claude Sautet. Only one of those reached this list this time, but the general quality of his movies was nothing short of incredibly impressive. In other aspects, I'll probably also especially think back at the year as my first experiences with the poetic masterpiece L'atalante from Jean Vigo and the amazing cinematic achievements in Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes are Flying.

Although I haven't seen as many movies as I'd liked, I've still had them on my mind quite a bit. Not for nothing movies like Starship Troopers, Sedotta e abbandonata, and Mächen in Uniform all have climbed a lot without a viewing in the past year. I've of course also spent quite a bit of time on creating the Letterboxd Season Challenge. Hopefully quite a few participants have enjoyed their experience with it. So far, I've already myself spent it falling in love with movies like High and Low and Picnic at Hanging Rock, and been impressed as heck by the likes of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, La belle noiseuse, It's a Wonderful Life, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Assault on Precinct 13 and Get Carter. Hopefully I can add another dozen or so movies to either of those list by the end of the challenge.

For 2016 I hope to revisit quite a few of the movies on this list. Some of them because they desperately need such a revisit to have any hopes of appearing on the next list, and others simply because I crave them. It's quite common that fresher experiences live on better in memory, and as such some great experiences from years ago doesn't manage to keep hold of my esteem as well as those fresher ones. There's a few notable exceptions, though. A movie like M have I only seen once, and still it amazingly enough managed to climb from 9th to 6th this year because it grew in esteem as I pondered a few of its qualities in the year that passed.

A last note on Krzysztof Kieslowski. I mentioned I do believe Akira Kurosawa stands a good chance to overtake him in 2016, but I also need to revisit Kieslowski's Three Colours-trilogy sooner rather than later. And the lovely combination of his magic and Juliette Binoche's outstanding acting stands a very good chance of adding Blue to this list next time around.

Then I guess only one thing remains... to wish you all...

Merry Christmas,
Monsieur Flynn.