Every December I tap out a list of the year’s best (excellent, very good and good) and I usually end up with a tally of maybe 20 films or 25 films, and 30 if I want to be liberal about it. But if you were to boil these down to the really good ones that will probably stand the test of time, you’d probably be closer to 10 or 15. Which is why 1962 seems like such an amazing year. Jules and Jim, The Manchurian Candidate, To Kill a Mockingbird, Knife in the Water, Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, L’Eclisse, Lolita, The Exterminating Angel, Ride the High Country, The Miracle Worker, The Longest Day, Days of Wine and Roses, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner — that’s 15 films and we’re less than halfway through the list. The Trial, Sundays and Cybele, Winter Light, Dr. No, My Name Is Ivan, A Kind of Loving, Mutiny on the Bounty, Billy Budd, The L-Shaped Room, Cape Fear, Freud, Carnival of Souls, Lonely Are the Brave, Advise & Consent, Birdman of Alcatraz, Eva, David and Lisa, Sweet Bird of Youth, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Counterfeit Traitor, War Hunt, Phaedra, Lisa, Day of the Triffids and Antoine and Colette. 40 films that pretty much everyone who’s taken a film course or owns a film anthology book has seen and admired or or least respects, and at least 20 or 25 stone classics.
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