IFTA's Top 30 Indie Films of the Past 30 Years

The Independent Film & Television Alliance is celebrating their 30th anniversary by naming the top 30 independent films of the past 30 years.

The Hollywood Reporter has the list, broken down by decade.

From 1981-1990, in alphabetical order, their picks are:

• Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)
• Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
• Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
• Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1982)
• Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982)
• My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
• Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986)
• sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)
• The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

And the honorable mentions for that decade:

• The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe, 1984)
• The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987)
• The Toxic Avenger (Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, 1986)

From 1991-2000, the picks are:

• Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
• Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994)
• Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997)
• Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
• Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
• The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
• The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)
• Where the Day Takes You (Marc Rocco, 1992)

Honorable mentions for the 90s:

• Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992)
• Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1998)
• Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)

And from 2001-2010, the IFTA picks:

• Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
• Crash (Paul Haggis, 2005)
• The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
• Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
• Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
• Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2005)
• Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2004)
• The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2003)
• Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2009)

Honarable mentions from the past decade are:

• Bowling For Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
• Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
• Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008)

There's a lot of talent in that list, including a lot of Oscar winners, and tons of nominees. Ang Lee appears twice, Danny Boyle twice, and Quentin Tarantino three times. It's probably a great place to start for filling out your Netflix queue, if there are any movies on the list you haven't seen. And for almost every director there, you'd probably do well to go ahead and add their other films while you're at it, too.

The one that jumps out at me as not belonging is Twilight. I know it made a lot of money and is beloved by 13-year-old girls everywhere, but I think it's a really terrible movie. There is one film I haven't seen in the list, Where the Day Takes You, so I suppose that could be worse, but somehow I doubt it. I'm also not sure exactly what The Toxic Avenger is doing here.

I'm surprised to see that Robert Rodriguez doesn't have anything on this list; I would've thought Slacker would've made the cut, at the very least. Other than that, it seems like the Kill Bill films deserve a spot, but Tarantino is already the most-represented director on the list, so leaving those off is pretty understandable. What really shocks me is that neither of the Andersons—Paul Thomas and Wes (no relation)—make an appearance. Lists like this are meant to spark discussion, though, not to be the final word on the matter, so omissions like these help to achieve just that.

Defining what makes a film "independent" is a notoriously fuzzy area, so if you wanted to quibble you could probably disqualify a lot of what was chosen (and argue for the inclusion of many others), but overall I think this is a pretty solid list of some really great movies, whether you consider it to be complete or not.

Comments

[D]

The only unforgivable omission is Do the Right Thing. I also would have bumped up Memento and Last Emperor in place of Crash and Gandhi.

[Mike Chesnut]

No Spike Lee at all, for that matter. That's a pretty big miss on their part. (And mine, for not mentioning it.)

[FishFish]

Erm..where is donnie darko..surprised that wasnt mentioned tbh lol

[Chris]

Lord of the Rings was an Independent Film? Really??

[SEAN]

Yea Spike Lee defintly needs to be up there, come onnnn

Thank goodness they got Juno, I breathed a huge sigh of relief...

Great netflix que I agree

[This Way]

I want to know what their definition of "independent." There's a lot of films up there that just does not seem to fit in the category. Pretty weird that Lord of the Rings is up there.

[agburns25]

have you guys started link baiting article with only a few words shown before you have to click through.

[D]

This doesn't seem like link baiting to me. This is how Colin generally posted stuff that contained long lists.