The Other Side of the Wind found itself on close to fifty Best of the Year lists in the weeks following its release in fall 2018.
A year later, Orson Welles’ posthumous offering has been hailed by a dozen media outlets as among the Best Films of the 2010s.
The Other Side of the Wind topped the Best of the Decade list that director Guy Maddin (The Green Fog) submitted to Film Comment, while Screen Rant ranked it at No. 4 on its list of the Best Streaming Movies of the Decade.
“Shot in a mockumentary style with rapid editing that feels startlingly ahead of its time, The Other Side of the Wind is both a love letter and vicious takedown of the end of classic Hollywood as well as the hot young auteurs who replaced the old studio hands,” Screen Rant wrote. “Netflix is frequently criticized for its seemingly apathetic stance towards hosting and preserving films older than 30 years old, but The Other Side of the Wind probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t thanks to them, and that’s something worth celebrating. It helps that the finished product is genuinely brilliant too.”
The Other Side of the Wind was a runner-up on the Top 10 films of the decade list offered by The Wrap; earned a No. 10 spot from Jacob Shamsian of Business Insider; charted at No. 8 on Daily Wire; placed at No. 7 by reviewer Soham Gadre for Film Inquiry; ranked at No. 6 by Filmotomy‘s Jerry Robinson; and checked in at No. 3 on the roster retired Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum submitted to Caimán Cuadernos de Cine.
It also placed at No. 15 on the Top 25 list Jay Avila provided to Much Ado About Cinema; and No.31 on the Top 50 list created by Geeks Under Grace.
In a Top 100 list complied by Little White Lies it placed at No. 48. At Hyperreal Film Club, it was ranked at No. 77: “Orson Welles’ s–t has always been about watching powerful, impossibly witty, misunderstood men be powerful, impossibly witty, and misunderstood, and this finally-released final film is one million percent that thing.”
Taste of Cinema placed The Other Side of the Wind at No. 7 on its list of the The 20 Most Complex Movies of The 2010s.
“There’s a great meta commentary to the film, as it explores the life of Jake Hannaford (John Huston) as he screens his latest film, and by using a ‘film within a film’ model, the film examines Hannaford’s hidden secrets through his latest film; ironically, viewers now use The Other Side of the Wind to examine Welles and his lost insight,” the website wrote. “It’s a relic of cinema that both indulges and satirizes experimentation filmmaking, and is an essential watch for any cinephile.”
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