Best first viewings, 2023

Pre-2023 releases only, chronologically organized.

Top twenty

La Bête Humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
Margie (Henry King, 1946)
Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947)
They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
Caught (Max Ophüls, 1949)
Lust for Life (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
Trilogy of Terror (Dan Curtis, 1975)
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
Pauline at the Beach (Éric Rohmer, 1983)
A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
Patty Hearst (Paul Schrader, 1988)
Jade (William Friedkin, 1995)
Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995)
Stealing Beauty (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1996)
Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999)
Ju-On: The Curse (Takashi Shimizu, 2000)
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams, 2012)

Other standouts

After Death (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915)
Satan’s Rhapsody (Nino Oxilia, 1917)
Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison, 1923)
A House Divided (William Wyler, 1931)
Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Night at the Crossroads (Jean Renoir, 1932)
A Night on Bald Mountain (Claire Parker & Alexandre Alexeieff, 1933)
From Mayerling to Sarajevo (Max Ophüls, 1940)
The Letter (William Wyler, 1940)
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947)
The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949)
Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock, 1950)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955)
A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald, 1956)
Interlude (Douglas Sirk, 1957)
The H-Man (Ishirô Honda, 1958)
I Bury the Living (Albert Band, 1958)
The Flesh and the Fiends (John Gilling, 1960)
Allures (Jordan Belson, 1961)
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963)
The Collector (William Wyler, 1965)
The Birthday Party (William Friedkin, 1968)
Secret Ceremony (Joseph Losey, 1968)
Claire’s Knee (Éric Rohmer, 1970)
The Last Run (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
Super Fly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972)
Legacy of Satan (Gerard Damiano, 1974)
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
The Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine, 1977)
The Pied Piper (Jiří Barta, 1986)
The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990)
Def by Temptation (James Bond III, 1990)
Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)
The Tempest (Stanislav M. Sokolov, 1992)
Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 1993)
Affliction (Paul Schrader, 1997)
Forever Mine (Paul Schrader, 1999)
In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001)
Auto Focus (Paul Schrader, 2002)
Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004)
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams, 2009)
Nas: Time is Illmatic (One9, 2014)
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (Andrew Jarecki, 2015)
Beware the Slenderman (Irene Taylor Brodsky, 2016)
Sick (John Hyams, 2022)
Tár (Todd Field, 2022)