ABOUT THE MOONLIGHTS

The Oscars’ Best Picture choices often look odd in retrospect - so why not just wait for the retrospect and then give out the award?

That’s the premise of the Moonlight Awards, a movie-history project launched in 2020. For every year from 1930-2009 - eighty years in all - we’ll nominate the five films that have best stood the test of time, and honor a single winner.

Which movies still earn critical acclaim? Which ones have managed to remain beloved and popular? Which ones have had the largest lasting influence? Those are your Moonlight winners - the best films of the year, now that enough time has passed to know for sure.

ABOUT THE METHODOLOGY

We award the Moonlights based on three criteria:

Critical acclaim
Enduring popularity
Lasting influence

Of course even with years of hindsight, choosing the ‘best’ movie of the year is still highly subjective. (Let alone picking the top five nominees!) To make our choice as objective as possible, we’ve gathered data from a wide variety of sources, including:

Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll
Sight & Sound's 2012 directors' poll
BBC's Top 100 American films (2015) and Top 100 Foreign-Language films (2018)
Empire's 100 Greatest Movies (2017)
The Hollywood Reporter's 100 Favorite Films survey (2013)
The American Film Institute's Top 100 (2007)
The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films
Leonard Maltin's "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century" (2000)
Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Movies (2013)
Harris Interactive's 2014 public-opinion survey
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?' ranked list of the 1000 greatest films
Annual rankings on Films101.com
User ratings on IMDB.com (focusing on the number of votes a film receives, not the aggregate rating)

In addition, we’ve also surveyed dozens of film critics and scholars, to help us choose our nominees and our winners. (See below for the list of participating individuals.) We’ll post the survey results on each year’s individual page.

ABOUT THE PEOPLE

Aaron Keck is the founder of the Moonlight Awards and the host of the Moonlight Awards podcast. He also hosts "The Aaron Keck Show" on WCHL (97.9 FM) in Chapel Hill, NC.

Aaron has a Ph.D. in political theory from Rutgers University and teaches American government at Durham Technical Community College. He lives in Durham, NC, with his husband Brad Bednar.

Rachel Schaevitz is the founder of the Moonlight Awards and the host of the Moonlight Awards podcast. She's also the Associate Director for State Outreach and Strategic Partnerships at Carolina Public Humanities, UNC-Chapel Hill.

She earned her Ph.D. in Media & Communication from Temple University, her MFA in Film Studies from Boston University and BFA in Film Production from New York University. She has worked in marketing for New Line Cinema and DreamWorks SKG, as well as in the art departments of many independent and union films.

Our expert panel (always growing and changing!) features scholars and critics with a wide variety of backgrounds and areas of specialization - and all of them love the movies. (This is a comprehensive list of all the scholars who have contributed; there's a slightly different set of panelists each decade.)

Charles Ramírez Berg, University of Texas-Austin

John Bruns, College of Charleston

Jordan Calhoun, Black Nerd Problems

Anne Cheng, Princeton University

Sylvia Chong, University of Virginia

Dana Coen, University of North Carolina

Shilpa Davé, University of Virginia

Blair Davis, DePaul University

Linda DeLibero, Johns Hopkins University

Maria DiBattista, Princeton University

Randi Emerman, Film Fest 919

Jennifer Fay, Vanderbilt University

Caryl Flinn, University of Michigan

Bill Georgaris, They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Herbert Golder, Boston University

Beverly Gray, UCLA

Markos Hadjioannou, Duke University

Philip Hallman, University of Michigan

Lucas Hilderbrand, University of California-Irvine

Guo-Juin Hong, Duke University

Annette Insdorf, Columbia University

Noah Isenberg, University of Texas-Austin

Martin Johnson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Claire King, Vanderbilt University

Robert King, Columbia University

Lutz Koepnick, Vanderbilt University

Donna Kornhaber, University of Texas-Austin

Akira Lippit, University of Southern California

William Little, University of Virginia

Meta Mazaj, University of Pennsylvania

Jeff Menne, Oklahoma State University

Leland Monk, Boston University

Albert Nigrin, Rutgers University

Karla Oeler, Stanford University

Susan Ohmer, Notre Dame University

Michael Pearce, North Carolina Central University

Andrea Press, University of Virginia

W. Russell Robinson, North Carolina Central University

Anne-Gaëlle Saliot, Duke University

Maria San Filippo, Emerson College

Deborah Swedberg, Boston University

Virginia Wright Wexman, University of Illinois-Chicago

Rick Warner, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Colin Williamson, Rutgers University