The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever

Tristan Ettleman

The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.

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106 episodes
Updated Wednesday
Explicit

Episodes106

Newest first

March 11 · 58 min
1911 E2 - Kathy Feeley
Kathy Feeley, professor of history at the University of Redlands, wrote https://www.routledge.com/Mary-Pickford-Hollywood-and-the-New-Woman/Feeley/p/book/9780813348056, so it makes sense that two of her picks center the film icon and pioneer, still in...
March 4 · 4 min
1911 E1 - The Feature Begins?
1911 really feels like the beginning of the feature film. Oh sure, it didn’t suddenly define the output of the global film industry, but ambitious experiments from Italy, Denmark, Russia, and only very tentatively, America, sat alongside narrative, as...
February 25 · 5 min
1910 E7 - Legitimacy and Controversy
Hopefully you’re not too tired of hearing about how 1910 and its surrounding years are part of a transitional era, but this season’s conversations also revealed how diverse the global medium was at the turn of a new decade with offbeat modes, genres,...
February 18 · 36 min
1910 E6 - Kathy Rose O'Regan
As Executive Director of https://filmpreserve.org/, Kathy Rose O’Regan works hard to highlight our shared film heritage. Her five picks certainly paint a picture of the international nuances of 1910 filmmaking, with each hailing from a different...
February 11 · 42 min
1910 E5 - Kynan Dias
Kynan Dias, Assistant Professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is no stranger to podcasting as co-host, with Lester Ryan Clark, of a series of film history podcasts on http://trustory.fm. His picks reflect some of the conversation surrounding...
February 4 · 56 min
1910 E4 - Laura Horak
Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, is the author of https://www.ubcpress.ca/girls-will-be-boys. Therefore, most of the conversation addresses the transgression, or lack thereof, of films that depicted such changes in dress,...
January 28 · 1 hr 13 min
1910 E3 - David Morton
David Morton, Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, is the author of https://floridapress.org/9780813069999/motion-picture-paradise/. With this expertise in mind, the opening of the conversation covers the American film industry’s halting...
January 21 · 50 min
1910 E2 - Ned Thanhouser
Ned Thanhouser is president of https://thanhouser.org/ and grandson of film pioneers Gertrude and Edwin Thanhouser. It makes sense, then, that he and Tristan discuss the founding of his family’s studio, which released its first film in 1910, but they...
January 14 · 5 min
1910 E1 - The Beginning of a Decade
The start of the 1910s doesn’t quite immediately usher in the cinematic measurement that would come to rule the decade: the feature film. But proto-forms of what would become the narrative standard arise in 1910, and otherwise, exciting images,...
January 7 · 4 min
1909 E7 - A Funny Year
One of the most diverse lists of films selected for any season so far defines this brief conclusion to 1909. The unique array of selections does ultimately lead into a universal appreciation for comedy, rising above some of the efforts to “legitimize”...
Dec 31, 2025 · 58 min
1909 E6 - Paul Flaig
Paul Flaig, Lecturer in Film Studies at University of St Andrews, wrote a stellar synthesis of disciplines with his new book https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/weimar-slapstick-and-hollywood-comedy-transformed-9781350439177/. While it clearly deals with a...
Dec 24, 2025 · 52 min
1909 E5 - Yuki Irikura
Yuki Irikura, Assistant Professor at Waseda University, mostly selects D.W. Griffith films for her 1909 list, reflecting the director’s growing powers and appeal. She concludes, however, with old-school tricks and the debut of Japan’s first film star....
Dec 17, 2025 · 48 min
1909 E4 - Kathy Fuller-Seeley
Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, studied early cinema audiences with her book https://www.amazon.com/At-Picture-Show-Small-Town-Audiences/dp/0813920825. Since then, her research interests have...
Dec 10, 2025 · 53 min
1909 E3 - Donald Crafton
Author and scholar Donald Crafton wrote https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo3639284.html, a defining work of early animation history. Yet with the exception of one example from a filmmaker much discussed in that book and especially...
Dec 3, 2025 · 50 min
1909 E2 - Paddy Adamson
Paddy Adamson, Associate Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, recently published his monograph https://www.oupress.com/9780806196077/projecting-america/. While this particular research interest is represented by one pick, albeit...
Nov 26, 2025 · 6 min
1909 E1 - The End of a Decade
The end of the first decade of the 20th century is a fitting time to reflect on the monumental changes facing the cinematic medium and the global industry that supported it in 1909. As this season will demonstrate, with an extremely diverse array of...
Nov 19, 2025 · 5 min
1908 E7 - Prestige and Spectacle
The introduction to this 1908 season addressed the elephant in the room: D.W. Grififth’s directorial debut. However, even though he came up quite a bit in the five conversations, his films didn’t dominate the selections (yet), and the heterogeneity of...
Nov 12, 2025 · 48 min
1908 E6 - Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa, Associate Professor of Film and Media at Seattle University, focuses his research on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. But except for a couple of intriguing threads related to this...
Nov 5, 2025 · 51 min
1908 E5 - Donald Sosin
Donald Sosin has been composing and performing silent film music since 1971. His experience playing at major festivals all over the world, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, informs the milestone in film music that is one of his...
Oct 29, 2025 · 52 min
1908 E4 - Ivo Blom
Ivo Blom, lecturer in Comparative Arts & Media Studies at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, connected, through the lens of an early film pioneer in the Netherlands, international aesthetics and film industry markets with his book...

The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever

1911 E2 - Kathy Feeley

1911 E1 - The Feature Begins?

1910 E7 - Legitimacy and Controversy

1910 E6 - Kathy Rose O'Regan

1910 E5 - Kynan Dias

1910 E4 - Laura Horak

1910 E3 - David Morton

1910 E2 - Ned Thanhouser

1910 E1 - The Beginning of a Decade

1909 E7 - A Funny Year

1909 E6 - Paul Flaig

1909 E5 - Yuki Irikura

1909 E4 - Kathy Fuller-Seeley

1909 E3 - Donald Crafton

1909 E2 - Paddy Adamson

1909 E1 - The End of a Decade

1908 E7 - Prestige and Spectacle

1908 E6 - Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa

1908 E5 - Donald Sosin

1908 E4 - Ivo Blom