J. Hoberman's Annual Top 10 Lists, Ranked

For three decades at The Village Voice, J. Hoberman's year-end lists (1977–2006) championed the avant-garde alongside the arthouse. Here is every film from those lists in our library, re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.

265 films from this list are in our library; the top 30 by composite score are shown — the ranking is ours, not the list's own order.

1
Apocalypse Now1979 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States · war, action, drama
6.84
Palme d'Or winner 1979 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #18 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #19
2
Goodfellas1990 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, crime, thriller
6.33
BAFTA Best Film winner 1991 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #28 · Empire 500 (2008) #6
3
Pulp Fiction1994 · Quentin Tarantino · United States · crime, drama, thriller
5.76
Palme d'Or winner 1994 · Empire 500 (2008) #9 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1994
4
Raging Bull1980 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, drama, action
5.71
AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22 · Siskel's annual top 10 1980 #1
5
Annie Hall1977 · Woody Allen · United States · comedy, romance, drama
5.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1977 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1978 · Siskel's annual top 10 1977 #1
6
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles1975 · Chantal Akerman · Belgium / France · drama
5.26
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #4 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1978 #1
7
In the Mood for Love2000 · Wong Kar-wai · Hong Kong, China / France / Thailand · romance, drama
5.13
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #5 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9
8
Unforgiven1992 · Clint Eastwood · United States · western, drama, crime
4.96
Oscar Best Picture winner 1992 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #1
9
Mulholland Drive2001 · David Lynch · United States · mystery, thriller, crime
4.61
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #1 · Film Comment year-end poll 2001 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #8
10
Do the Right Thing1989 · Spike Lee · United States · comedy, drama
4.39
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1989 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #24 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #29
11
The Silence of the Lambs1991 · Jonathan Demme · United States · thriller, horror, crime
4.23
Oscar Best Picture winner 1991 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1991 #2 · AFI 100 (2007) #74
12
Platoon1986 · Oliver Stone · United States / Philippines · war, drama, action
4.09
Oscar Best Picture winner 1986 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1987 #2 · Ebert's annual top 10 1986 #1
13
The Thin Red Line1998 · Terrence Malick · United States · war, drama
3.46
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1999 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1999 #2 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1998
14
Beau Travail1999 · Claire Denis · France · drama
3.23
Film Comment year-end poll 2000 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #7 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #14
15
Shoah1985 · Claude Lanzmann · France · documentary
3.18
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #27 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1985 #1 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1989 #1
16
Underground1995 · Emir Kusturica · France / Germany / Bulgaria · comedy, drama, war
3.13
Palme d'Or winner 1995 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1996 #3 · Kehr's annual top 10 1995 #2
17
Blue Velvet1986 · David Lynch · United States · mystery, thriller, drama
3.13
Hoberman's annual top 10 1986 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #85
18
Stranger Than Paradise1984 · Jim Jarmusch · United States / Germany · drama, comedy
3.00
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1986 #1 · Locarno Golden Leopard winner 1984 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1984 #3
19
Lost in Translation2003 · Sofia Coppola · United States / Japan · comedy, romance, drama
2.95
Film Comment year-end poll 2003 #1 · Sarris's annual top 10 2003 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2003
20
A Brighter Summer Day1991 · Edward Yang · Taiwan, China · drama
2.89
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1992 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #78
21
The Child2005 · Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne · Belgium / France · drama
2.89
Palme d'Or winner 2005 · Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #4 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2005 #4
22
L'Argent1983 · Robert Bresson · France · drama, crime
2.83
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1983 #1 · Kehr's annual top 10 1984 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72
23
Wings of Desire1987 · Wim Wenders · France / Germany · fantasy, drama
2.83
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #2 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185
24
A City of Sadness1989 · Hou Hsiao-Hsien · Taiwan, China · drama
2.77
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1990 #1 · Venice Golden Lion winner 1989 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157
25
Breaking the Waves1996 · Lars von Trier · Denmark / Sweden / France · drama, romance
2.69
Cannes Grand Prix winner 1996 · Kehr's annual top 10 1996 #1 · Ebert's annual top 10 1996 #2
26
Tropical Malady2004 · Apichatpong Weerasethakul · Thailand / Italy / Germany · drama
2.46
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2004 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #62 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #95
27
Stalker1979 · Andrei Tarkovsky · Soviet Union · sci-fi, drama
2.42
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #14 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #43 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1981 #7
28
Magnolia1999 · Paul Thomas Anderson · United States · drama
2.37
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2000 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185 · Ebert's annual top 10 1999 #2
29
Before Sunset2004 · Richard Linklater · United States · romance, drama
2.36
Film Comment year-end poll 2004 #3 · Sarris's annual top 10 2004 #1 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #26
30
Othello1951 · Orson Welles · United States · drama
2.33
Palme d'Or winner 1952 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1987 #3 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies

J. Hoberman spent a working lifetime defending the films the mainstream would not sit through, and this page is what happens when that stubborn taste is fed to a machine that counts only consensus. From 1988 to 2012 he was the senior film critic at The Village Voice, and his year-end ten-best columns — which our library gathers across the seasons of 1977 to 2006 — read now as a three-decade argument that the avant-garde and the multiplex belonged in the same conversation. The ranking above is not his. It is ours: every title he named, re-sorted by our composite score across 20-plus lists, awards and polls, so the distance between one critic's eye and the wider record becomes something you can measure.

The critic behind the list

Hoberman joined the Voice in the 1970s — his first published review, in 1977, took the measure of David Lynch's Eraserhead — and became a full-time staff writer in 1983 before inheriting the senior chair five years later. In 1981 he coined "vulgar modernism" for the disreputable fringe of American popular culture he prized, and his books ran the same wide gauge, from Midnight Movies (1983), written with Jonathan Rosenbaum, to the Yiddish-cinema study Bridge of Light (1992). What that biography predicts, the list confirms: here is a viewer who reached past the arthouse toward the underground, and whose ten-best selections treated a Chantal Akerman or an Apichatpong Weerasethakul as front-page business.

How to read our list

Our composite score rewards accumulated agreement, which is why the top of this page looks more like the received American canon than like Hoberman's own reputation. Apocalypse Now (1979) leads at 6.84, with Unforgiven (1992), Annie Hall (1977), Goodfellas (1990) and Pulp Fiction (1994) crowding in just behind it. His fingerprint shows lower down, where the score thins but the choices sharpen. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) sits at 5.26; Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady (2004) scores 2.46, Claire Denis's Beau Travail (1999) 3.23, and Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day (1991) 2.89.

Those are films the broader record still undervalues and Hoberman did not, which is the clearest thing this page has to teach. A deep cut like Alain Resnais's Providence (1977), scoring only 1.64, would sit near the floor of almost anyone else's ledger; that Hoberman ranked it among a year's ten best is the whole point of reading a single critic against the crowd. Even his brushes with the mainstream carry the same slant — David Lynch recurs from that 1977 debut through Blue Velvet (1986) at 3.13 and Mulholland Drive (2001) at 4.61 — but the reason to keep his list is everything the consensus never quite got around to rewarding.