I was a bit of a latecomer to loving movies. I first got really interested in film around 2007 when I was a teen, but it wasn't until the start of this decade that I truly started watching films avidly. And as the definition of who can make movies and how they can make them has expanded, there has been so much cinema to consume, and I've tried my best to soak it all up. There are still blindspots on my list -- I wish there were more international films on it, as well as films directed by women and people of color -- but I think it still represents many different genres and styles.
The rules: My albums list had a limit of only one album per act, but that felt a little restrictive for films, so I loosened it up to have a maximum of two films per director. There are a few examples of that on this list. Did I make the right choice? Who can say, I love my auteurs! A small change from my year end lists is that I always use the American theatrical release date of a film to determine its eligibility. Since that's a little harder to track and remember as time goes by, I'm just going by the year listed on IMDB, which will sometimes be the year before the theatrical release if the movie premiered at a festival. With that in mind, the eligibility window is a world premiere between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019. This doesn't factor in often, but one example is Dogtooth, which had a theatrical release in 2010 but is not eligible because its world premiere was in 2009.
