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Four New Lists: Red & White Outside the Can(nes)on

December 30, 2024 — 17 comments

Hello again everyone,

After a longer interval than intended, and a somewhat painful punny title, we're back with 4 official lists being adopted for the New Year:

Canadian Screen Award - Best Film
SonntagsZeitung's The 100 Best Swiss Films
Cannes Film Festival - Jury Prize
366 Weird Movies - Apocryphally Weird

These four adoptions were the culmination of almost 18 months discussion and hiatus, and we hope that they will provide you with new avenues of cinema to explore.

The Canadian Screen Awards were created in 2013 by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, merging the two previous awards for film (Genies) and television (Geminis). The film awards had a history going back to 1949, when the Canadian Film Awards were first handed out. Over the years, the Best Film award has had a number of names, including Film of the Year, Best Feature Film, and Best Motion Picture. Canadian cinema has become known worldwide for documentaries, animated shorts, genre films, and talent exported to Hollywood over the years. This list highlights the films that were acclaimed in their home country as the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars. As such, we present to you the combined Canadian Screen Award - Best Film official list.

List adopted from Panunzio, while mlamarre79 has separate lists for each individual award.

Swiss Newspaper SonntagsZeitung (literally "Sunday Newspaper") has been publishing polls on Swiss cinema every five years since 2001. Their 2016 list is their most recent, however - perhaps the pandemic interrupted their planned 2021 version. Regardless, Swiss cinema is often overlooked and one we wish to highlight. With the expectation that this list will continue to be updated periodically, we felt this was the best representation of the best films of the country. Höhenfeuer (Alpine Fire) has topped the list in all four editions of the poll - will it come out on top again next time in 2026? Check out SonntagsZeitung's The 100 Best Swiss Films to start making your predictions today.

List adopted from Jonas Van Dutch.

Once again the people have spoken! The most highly voted list on our last user survey, the Cannes Film Festival - Jury Prize, is becoming official. Awarded by the Cannes jury and generally considered the third most prestigious award at the festival after the Palme d’Or and the Grand Prix, the Cannes Jury Prize is said to be awarded to “an original work that embodies the spirit of inquiry.”

List adopted from Timec.

While lovers of off-trail cinema have embraced the already official 366 Weird Movies list, the project has been finished for several years now with no plans for updates. To satiate the hunger of the denizens of the bizarre, we are delighted to adopted the companion 366 Weird Movies - Apocryphally Weird list for users to continue their journey on the twisted, strange pathways of the weirdest that cinema has to offer. This list now has 50 titles in it, and will continue to grow as new films are certified weird.

List adopted from russa03.

Thanks to Tim2460 for designing this batch of list icons.

Aside from these new lists, some of our other lists have had some major updates as well.
  • Time Out's 1000 Films to Change Your Life - We've decided to include every film mentioned in the book, so the list now has over 1200 films, as it became to difficult to determine which films were supposed to be part of the 1000 and which were not. Thank to user Apu for spearheading the revision of the list.
  • TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films: 1001-2500 - In their update this year, TSPDT expanded their Top 2000 to a Top 2500, so we've reflected that expansion in our iCM list as well.
  • KOFA's 100 Korean Films - The Korean Film Archive updated their list again this year, resulting in a 35 new films joining the list, including some of Korea's most-acclaimed films released since their last update in 2013.
  • The Criterion Collection - The list continues to grow, with 1542 titles currently included, thus allowing it to regain top spot as our longest official list, surpassing the newly expanded TSPDT 1001-2500.
  • And award season has kicked off, with the National Board of Review selecting Wicked as their top film of the year.

As we reach halfway through the decade, we're grateful to still be part of your internet and film experience. May your 2025 be as rewarding as your new favourite films that you'll hopefully see. :)

Many thanks,
The iCheckMovies Team

Kong and the Silver Dove: Ape with a Movie Camera

May 18, 2023 — 36 comments

Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere, and with the changing of the seasons comes another regular happening: new list adoptions!

We have four lists to add to the Official roster this round, and we hope that you will enjoy perusing each one of them and exploring what they have to offer to all cinephiles new and old.

First up, we have the newest list, Encuesta de cine argentino's Top Argentinian Films from a poll conducted last year. It's an update to previous polls done about Argentinian cinema in 1977 and 2000, the latter of which is also on icm. We've long wanted a proper list of Argentinian cinema, but felt the previous one was too old, missing many great films from the 21st century that have won fans at festivals, awards, and arthouse cinemas around the world. 821 film were nominated by 546 voters in this robust poll, and our top list includes all films with at least 11 votes. World Cup Champions and a new official list? Vamos, vamos, Argentina! List first located by Angel Glez and adopted from Fergenaprido.

Second in line is another country list first published in 2021, Dovzhenko Centre's Top 100 Ukrainian Films. Often overshadowed by it's larger neighbour to the east, Ukraine's film industry first emerged over a hundred years ago within the Russian Empire, then Soviet Union, with the Centre's namesake Oleksandr (Alexander) Dovzhenko as one of the early star filmmakers of Soviet and Ukrainian cinema. This poll of national and international film critics sought to produce a list of the best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema, and the final list spans almost 100 years from the end of the silent era to 2020. Adopted from Timec.

Thirdly, we have one of the most well-known and prestigious genre film festival awards: Sitges Film Festival - El Kong Premi a la millor pel·lícula. Formerly known as the Maria Award, the Kong honours the best horror, fantasy, or science fiction film at the festival. Sitges is the only FIAPF-accredited competitive specialized film festival dedicated to showcasing some of the best genre films from around the world each year. Submissions for this year's festival are due July 17th, if any of our users have a film they wish to be screened there. Adopted from DulceDoes.

Lastly, our final new list adoption focuses on one aspect often considered crucial to a film's success: how it looks. The American Society of Cinematographers' 100 Milestone Films in Cinematography of the 20th Century, as voted by their members in celebration of the Society's 100th anniversary. From Metropolis to In the Mood for Love, these films have given us iconic visuals, and provided countless inspirations to young and aspiring filmmakers and filmgoers for generations past, present, and future. Adopted from The_Claw.

In other list news, Sight & Sound Magazine finally released the full ballots for all participants in their once a decade poll, so our Sight & Sound List has been updated. The TSPDT lists were also updated by Bill, and he's gone back to working on the 1000 Noirs list, which will likely hit 1000 films before the end of the year at his current pace (55 to go). TSZDT also got it's first update in two years, and the Doubling the Canon project is currently in the voting stage and will receive it's update in a few weeks' time.

Most national awards have been handed out in the past few months, including the Oscars where Everything Everywhere All at Once and All Quiet on the Western Front took most of the major awards, though the latter surprisingly failed to win the Lola for Best Film in its home country.

And finally, thanks to user Lahey for creating a CSS fix for the Awards Shelf Display. Awards should no longer hang off the shelves, though Marijn warns it may take some time for fix to show up in everyone's account.

Thanks again to mterry1988 for his list icon designs.

Many thanks,

The iCheckMovies Team

A Christmas Carol (or Three, or More)

December 28, 2022 — 35 comments

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, and Happy New Year from iCheckMovies! 15 years ago next month the first profile on iCM was created, and though it would be another year and a bit before it went public and users started checking movies on the site, we're grateful to have been around this long and hope to be here for at least 15 years more.

Things have changed in the last decade and a half, and in the world of cinema we've seen a number resurgences, reevaluations, and virtual riots and revolutions threatening to upend the status quo. #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are two of the biggest social movements in recent years, and their impact on the film world has been quite pronounced (as the Harvey Weinstein trial and #OscarsSoWhite have shown). The Sight & Sound Magazine published the results from their 8th decennial poll recently, with Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman coming out on top. Opinion pieces from around the globe and from all corners of the internet have weighed in, with many folks deciding that this film was pushed to the top by participants wishing to coalesce around a particular film directed by a woman. So far, only the Top 100 of the Critics' and Directors' polls have been released along with a handful of ballots. Once all the ballots are published, we'll update the official list here on iCM, and while the shakeup at the top of the list is sure to continue to drive discussion (and arguments) over the next decade, we hope everyone will look further down the list for new films to discover and appreciate. We truly believe that there's something for everyone in the canon.

Awards Season is upon us, with the National Board of Review awarding Best Film to Top Gun: Maverick. Other notable updates include Swedish magazine FLM's Best Swedish Films of All Time poll and the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Aside from list updates, we also have a site-wide new feature: JustWatch. Some users may be familiar with this service already; it's a tool that allows users to see which streaming services a film is available on (for free, for rent, or through a paid subscription). Currently, only the widget is implemented, which is available to all users. Further integration is being looked at that may provide more features for paid users, such as customizing which services are displayed.

Finally, we have some new official lists for you.

First, we have the BAFTA Award - Best British Film. While we already have the prestigious BAFTA Award - Best Film list official on iCM, that award is for the best film overall, and often mirrors the Oscars, while the Best British Film award is only available to homegrown productions. Indeed, in the last thirty years since the award was reinstated (after being absent since the last 1960s), only two films have won both BAFTAs: The King's Speech and 1917. We hope users will enjoy exploring more of what the British film industry has to offer, including the newly official Reach for the Sky and The Last King of Scotland, and the first three winners, all of which were directed by Carol Reed.

And second, we have a slew of iCM-based lists for you. The IMDb lists on iCM seem to divide the userbase: one either loves those lists and sees they as a great introduction to films from different genres and decades, or one detests them and wishes they would just disappear. So today we'd like to offer an alternative to the IMDb lists (they're not going anywhere): the iCM Most Favorited By Decade lists. Each list will feature the Top 100 films (including shorts) using a formula similar to the main iCM's Most Favorited list for every decade since the 1910s (just like the IMDB lists), plus a list for film made before 1910. These lists aim to showcase the films that you, the heart and soul of iCM, have loved the most, allowing for a richer exploration of cinema over the entire course of its existence.
pre-1910s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s

Once again, thanks to mterry1988 for his list icon designs.

Many thanks,

The iCheckMovies Team

Drive My Car through the Summer of Soul to see The Wizard of Oz before there's No Way Home

May 17, 2022 — 43 comments

Aaaaaand, we're back!

2022 is almost half-way over, and we've finally got some new Official List adoptions for you all. It's taken much (much much much) longer than any of us had anticipated or hoped for, but we're ready to bring a new batch of lists into the fold.

We've got four lists to showcase for you today. Three of them did well in our recent user poll of lists, and the fourth is one we've been wanting to adopt for while but wanted to wait until the list was robust enough to become Official.

You voted and we listened! In an adoption pulled from one of the top vote-getters of our last user poll, we present the list of Academy Award Winners for Feature Documentary. While we already have a handful of documentary-focused lists, the Oscars bring a different approach to appreciation of real life as cinema, shining a focus on many films that have courted little to no attention from other lists by academics and critics. From early wins by World War II documentaries to capturing important cultural events like Woodstock and the Vietnam conflict, from stunning films that showcase nature in action to biographical documentaries of the rich and (in)famous, and from true crime horror stories to films that purport to present an important message, you can find it all here in the Academy Award - Best Documentary Feature Winners. Adopted from flaiky.

Japan is arguably among the top five film-producing countries any way you look at it: critical acclaim, popularity, longevity, output, or notoriety. While we have a wonderful comprehensive list of the Top 200 Japanese Films from Kinema Junpo, the lack of an official Award list from Japan has been a glaring omission for years. With a handful of prominent awards to choose from, we ultimately decided to go with what we think is the most prestigious, as well as the one that's been around the longest (longer than even the Oscars). Containing well-known favourites from the likes of Kurosawa, Naruse, and Ozu, hard-to-come-by classics little-seen outside of Japan, and recent arthouse hits from auteurs like Koreeda and Hamaguchi, there may be something for everyone in the Kinema Junpo Award - Best Japanese Film list. Adopted from PeacefulAnarchy.

When one thinks of experts in cult cinema, the British Film Institute may not be the first name that comes to mind, yet this distinguished organization has released a book written by well-regarded film professors Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, who have compiled 100 Cult Films that illustrate the breadth and richness of cult cinema, spanning across multiple genres and decades. They have applied their own personal expertise to create an ideal beginner’s guide to the wild and woolly world of films with vivacious followings that can act as a smaller, more manageable counterpart to our already official 500 Essential Cult Movies list. If you are looking to immerse yourself into one of the many strange and unique film subcultures out there, look no further than BFI's 100 Cult Films. Adopted from Timec.

Our final list will help to plug the gap in films that are most overlooked in official lists: recent releases. With the pandemic throwing the entire industry into confusion, many release dates were pushed back numerous times in the past two years, and it's only now that we finally have enough films at or near the typical 1500 check threshold for the imdb decade lists. Big blockbusters feature prominently here, but smaller films that have slowly built up a broad base of appeal have almost managed to earn their place in this list... for now. Given that there are still 7.5 years left in the decade, we expect this list to drastically change over time, but that's part of the fun. How many of the films currently on the IMDB's 2020s Top 50 list do you think will still be around in ten years' time?

Scott Tobias, formerly at the A.V. Club, has revived his New Cult Canon at The Reveal. As such, we've added his recent reviews to the list (5 so far), and renamed it Scott Tobias's The New Cult Canon to reflect this update.

Finally, we'd like to extend our appreciation to two users who answered our call for icon design: mterry1988 and mcgaburi. Our icons this round were designed by mterry1988, and we're very pleased with how they turned out. We look forward to working with both artists for future list adoptions, and maybe more. This was one of the biggest roadblocks to list adoptions, so we breathed a huge collective sigh of relief after seeing some of the proposals from these talented individuals.

And that's a wrap! In recent months we also saw the annual updates to most of the award lists, the TSPDT and DTC refreshes, and the continued growth of the Criterion list. Sight & Sound have also indicated that the results of their once-a-decade poll will be published in their November 2022 issue, so we're excited to see how that list shakes up later this year.

Many thanks,

The iCheckMovies team

Interested in creating official list icons?

February 4, 2022

We’re looking for a volunteer to make vector images for icons in a similar style as our current icons. This would be a few icons a handful of times a year. If you’re interested, please fill out this form.

Cheers,

The iCheckMovies team

Vote on potential future adoptions! User Survey Due Dec 28

December 4, 2021

A month and a half ago we asked you for nominations for official lists and are very grateful to have received over 125 suggestions from a wide set of users. In order to keep the ballot manageable the moderators reduced this number to 70 lists. These were chosen based on a combination of what we felt could be acceptable official lists, what we thought users would be interested in and some that we may not think will be successful but want to have feedback on just to be sure. While some nominations were excluded because we did not feel the source or list was appropriate, most were acceptable lists that simply did not make the cut because of stiff competition and a desire to make the voting process accessible.

The next step in the process is for users to vote.
Go to this thread to vote
We've tried to streamline the voting process compared to past polls. In addition to curating the ballot a bit, we've made a web form so that you don't have to download a spreadsheet and email it.

All the lists have links to the list on ICM, so if you can, take the time to look at the list and the source if in doubt about the list.

While we do occasionally make adoptions that replace official lists, you should vote on these lists with the idea that they would be adopted in addition to anything already official. At the moment we are seeing all of these lists as potential additions, not replacements. Should that change, if we decide to consider one of the lists from this poll as a replacement instead, we will make a poll to get feedback on that decision.

How to vote:
1. Open the Lists that should be official form.
2. Rate each list from 1 to 5, and click submit.
3. Post in this thread to say that you voted.
Make sure you perform that last step, and enter your username in the form, so that your vote is counted.

Submission deadline is Dec 28, so you have time. If you have any questions about the process feel free to post in that thread or contact a moderator.

Thank you for your participation and continued interest in the site.

Suggest some potential official lists

October 17, 2021

The moderators are looking for lists to adopt as official. You may nominate up to 3 lists by posting them in the thread (personal lists and filmography lists are not eligible). We last ran a similar poll 3 years ago so it's about time for a refresh.

After the nomination phase is over:

The moderators will review the nominations and choose approximately 60-80 lists that we think may be popular with the users, and have a chance of being adopted within the next few years.
There will be a single voting phase. There will be a web form where you can rate each list based on how much you want it to be official. Voting will begin near the end of November, and will last 4 weeks.

In order to nominate films, head on over to the thread on our forum

Nominations are due Nov 7!!

Donatello Me You Ain't Thrilled

July 31, 2021

First things first, please welcome the new moderators: eiriknielsen, flavo5000, Gershwin, idjutt, OscarB. We had 20 applicants go through a two-step process, and these 5 were selected to help manage the site. We hope that they serve the community well over the next few years. Thank you also to the other 15 users who applied; we're grateful to have so many volunteers willing to step up and help keep this site going.

As the dog days of summer approach those in the northern regions, and the biting chill of mid-winter hits those in the southern regions, we have new official lists to keep you going through all the weird weather as you stay at home!

First up, Italia! When the Italian National Football Team somehow found out that iCM was going to adopt the David di Donatello - Best Italian Film list, they got so excited they went and won the Euro 2020 Tournament. The Davids are the top film prize in Italy, first awarded in 1970. As one of the few big film countries without an awards list, we felt it was time to adopt this one. Check out what this list has to offer, from the classic Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto to last year's Volevo nascondermi. Adopted from miramarco.

There's nothing quite like a good thriller that gets your heart racing and let's you know you're alive! From the films that made Hitchcock a household name to the gritty crime thrillers of recent years, we hope you'll find plenty of flims on Time Out’s The 100 Best Thrillers to keep you sitting on the edge of your seat for hours on end. Adopted from Panunzio.

Along with these two new lists, we have a few replacements this month.

The Público's Top Portuguese Films to Show in Schools was the best Portuguese list available for years, but the limited scope of the list left us eternally restless. Then, last year, a new poll was run with more participants, resulting in a more robust and broader list that covers all aspects of Portuguese cinema, not just those films acceptable in schools. So, while we will lose a few good films from the current list, we believe that filmSPOT's Best Portuguese Films list is a better tradeoff that will highlight Portuguese cinema even further, especially the numerous critically-acclaimed films that emerged at global festivals in the last decade. Adopted from mjf314.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and if we had known about this final list sooner, we would have held off on one swap we did last round. AMP's 100+1 Essential South Korean Movies was an improvement on the previous Korean list, but a new list created after we had already decided to make the switch showed up: Korean Screen's 100 Greatest Korean Films. While the AMP list is unranked and from a small editorial team from a website dedicated to Asian films, the Korean Screen list is ranked from a poll of 158 critics from around the world. Thus, we believe that this newest list is the best of them all... so far. Just please don't ask the Korean Film Archive to publish a new list next month and make us eat our words. Adopted from mjf314.

And that's a wrap from us. Let us know what you think about these new additions in the comments, or let us know on Twitter! New mod Eirik is managing the long-dormant social media account there, so feel free to engage with him there, or give him suggestions on what you'd like to see posted on the iCheckMovies account here.

Cheers,

The iCheckMovies team

Feeling Iffy? We’ve got the cure!

May 1, 2021

More than one year on, many of us are still trying to adjust to the "new normal" and cope with large-scale changes in the way we work and live. New variants that are more infectious, and questions about vaccines are leaving many people uncertain about the future and what lies ahead, and if we will ever get back to "normal" or not.

Spring is a season of rebirth, however, and with that we've got a few new official lists to share with you and help renew the love of cinema that we all share: lists from TIFF and BIFF.

The Toronto International Film Festival has grown to become one of the largest film festivals in the world, and is now seen as the unofficial start of the annual Awards Season. Every September almost 500,000 people come to see around 400 films from all over the world. Every attendee has the opportunity to vote for the People’s Choice Award from among all the feature films playing at the festival. As the largest and most important non-competitive film festival in the world, we feel that Toronto deserves a spot next to Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Sundance, and FESPACO in the ICM Film Festival Official Gang. Check out TIFF - People’s Choice Award and see the films that Toronto audiences have loved the most, from the relatively obscure Tempest (1982) and Bella (2006), to Oscar Best Picture winners American Beauty and 12 Years a Slave. The Award winner of the past 8 years has gone on to get a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. Will 2021’s Nomadland be the 9th? (adopted from dirty_score)

Although the Asian Cinema: A Field Guide is already official, some people may find it overwhelming, because it is very large and unranked. Therefore we are adopting a smaller ranked list, BIFF’s Asian Cinema 100, voted by 73 experts. Organized by the Busan International Film Festival, it includes films from 20 different Asian countries, and we hope you will find it a useful introduction to Asian Cinema. BIFF also intends to update the list every five years (though the 2020 update was cancelled/postponed because of the pandemic), so we hope that this list will remain current as time goes on, and continues to highlight the best of both classic and contemporary Asian cinema. (adopted from mjf314)

We currently have two official Korean lists. The KOFA list (voted by 62 experts) is a good representation of critics’ favorites, but we adopted the Film 2.0 list because we wanted a better representation of mainstream Korean cinema. However, the Film 2.0 list is already 13 years old, and many great Korean films have been made since then. Additionally, Film 2.0 no longer exists, which means the list will never be updated. Therefore, we are replacing it with a newer list, AMP’s 100+1 Essential South Korean Movies from Asian Movie Pulse, a website dedicated to Asian cinema. It contains many popular Korean movies, both old and new, including some of the biggest hits of the last decade. (adopted from Melvelet)

Additionally, many films have become official since the last adoption round.
The awards season is underway, with the latest roster of nominated films for the Academy Awards announced. But we already have a bunch of award-winning films for the season:



In Film Festival news, the Grand Jury at Sundance awarded its main prize to CODA, and Romanian director Radu Jude's latest film Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc won the Golden Bear.

Other lists that got updated with multiple films are TSPDT (29 new films), TSPDT 1001-2000 (100 new films), TSPDT 21st Century (60 new films), and TSPDT 1000 Noir (35 new films in 2021 so far).

• • • • •

P.S. We are looking for a few more moderators to join the current team to help out with maintaining the website. Any and all ICM users are encouraged to apply. More information on the specific duties of a moderator can be found on the application form here.

Many thanks,
The iCheckMovies team

So You Think You Can Moderate?

April 23, 2021

Over the years, iCheckMovies has relied on the dedicated volunteers whose passion for film and listmaking have worked to improve the site. Not least among those are our moderators, who have provided support to The Guy(s) to help with the day-to-day maintenance of the site and choose which lists should become official.

Being a moderator is not a life-long profession, and so we must say goodbye to two of our moderators, beavis and Lonewolf. We thank them both for their contributions to ICM over the past few years, and wish them well.

As a result, we are looking for a few more moderators to join the current team to help out with maintaining the website. Any and all ICM users are encouraged to apply. More information on the specific duties of a moderator can be found on the application form here.

Many thanks,
The iCheckMovies team

A blast from Asia

October 6, 2020 — 30 comments

And two more!

July 30, 2020 — 32 comments

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