Yes, I know "favoritest" isn't a word, but I'm (mis-)using it in the spirit (though not the letter) of the German language, in which you can construct all kinds of nifty words freely and on the spot -- like "Nachkriegsjahrzehnte," which as near as I can tell means "the decade after the war." All in one word! Wundervoll! Es ist mein neues Lieblingswort! German happens to be the primary language of the excellent film magazine Steadycam, edited by Milan Pavlovic, which has just published a magnificent 50th edition/25th anniversary issue (354 pages, plus a 24-page insert -- the size of a film festival catalog!), featuring a massive tribute to Robert Altman and an international poll of "lieblingsfilme" -- or, as I prefer to think of them, "favoritest films." (I'll take that over "most unique" any time.)
See, these are not just favorite films. They are the 30 most favorite films of the participating critics and filmmakers. (I suggested some online critics be included, so some of my favoritest -- including Dennis Cozzalio and Andy Horbal -- were also invited to contribute faves.) The last such Steadycam poll was in 1995, and although many of these movies are also on the AFI 100, I really enjoy the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of these individual and collective selections.
I'll have more about my 6,000+ words on Lady Pearl in "Nashville" (greatly expanded from a spontaneous Scanners post after Altman's death last year), but since we've been talking so much about the AFI 100 and other lists recently, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share the results of Steadycam's poll, along with my "30 lieblingsfilme" -- as I threw them together the day I submitted my list....
Die meistgenannten Filme
(most-mentioned favorite films)
"Vertigo" (Hitchcock, 1958)
"The Godfather" (Coppola, 1972)
"Le Mépris" / "Contempt" (Godard, 1963)
"North by Northwest" (Hitchcock, 1959)
"The Searchers" (Ford, 1956)
"Taxi Driver" (Scorsese, 1976)
"To Be or Not to Be" (Lubitsch, 1942)
"Some Like It Hot" (Wilder, 1959)
"Heat" (Mann, 1995)
"À bout de souffle" / "Breathless" (Godard, 1959)
"Blade Runner" (R. Scott, 1982)
"The Deer Hunter" (Cimino, 1978)
"Lawrence of Arabia" (Lean, 1962)
"Rio Bravo" (Hawks, 1959)
"Le Samourai" (Melville, 1967)
"Apocalypse Now" (Coppola, 1979)
"Jules et Jim" (Truffaut, 1961)
"Chinatown" (Polanski, 1974)
"The Godfather, Part II" (Coppola, 1974)
"Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo" / "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (Leone, 1966)
"Fa yeung nin wa" / "In the Mood for Love" (Wong, 2000)
"La Règle du jeu" / "The Rules of the Game" (Renoir, 1939)
"Sunrise" (Murnau, 1928)
"The Wild Bunch" (Peckinpah, 1968)
"Fargo" (Coen, 1996)
"Blowup" (Antoniono, 1966)
"Citizen Kane" (Welles, 1941)
"Il Gattopardo" / "The Leopard" (Visconti, 1963)
"M" (Lang, 1931)
"Touch of Evil" (Welles, 1958)
"The Apartment" (Wilder, 1960)
"C'era una volta il West" / "Once Upon a Time in the West" (Leone, 1968)
I love (or at least quite like) every movie on this list (except for the Wong, which I still haven't seen). OK, I'd put "Double Indemnity" or "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" or "Avanti!" or "Sunset Blvd." or "Ace in the Hole" or "One, Two Three" or maybe even "Kiss Me, Stupid" above Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" or "The Apartment," but that's me. Speaking of which, here's my list (as published):
View image This is one of the walls (viewed from the comfort of the Man Chair) that helped me generate my list of lieblingsfilme. Note prominence of Keaton (life mask) and Buñuel.
Jim Emerson
"Nashville" (Altman, 1975)
"Chinatown" (Polanski, 1974)
"Vertigo" (Hitchcock, 1958)
"Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
"Our Hospitality" (Keaton, Blystone, 1923)
"Steamboat Bill, Jr." (Keaton, Reisner, 1928)
"Citizen Kane" (Welles, 1941)
"Only Angels Have Wings" (Hawks, 1939)
"North by Northwest" (Hitchcock, 1959)
"Rio Bravo" (Hawks, 1959)
"Double Indemnity" (Wilder, 1944)
"La dolce vita" (Fellini, 1960)
"Barry Lyndon" (Kubick, 1975)
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (Kubrick, 1968)
"Trouble in Paradise" (Lubitsch, 1932)
"Holiday" (Cukor, 1938)
"Animal Crackers" (Heerman, 1930)
"Sunrise" (Murnau, 1927)
"Miller's Crossing" (Coen, 1990)
"Letter from an Unknown Woman" (Ophuls, 1948)
"Sansho Dayu" / "Sansho the Bailiff" (Mizoguchi, 1954)
"Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" / "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (Buñuel, 1972)
"Monty Python's Life of Brian" (T. Jones, 1979)
"Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes" / "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (Herzog, 1972)
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (Spielberg, 1977)
"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (Peckinpah, 1973)
"Dazed & Confused" (Linklater, 1993)
"Boogie Nights" (Anderson, 1997)
"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (T.L. Jones, 2005)
"Stop Making Sense" (J. Demme, 1984)
In choosing my favorites (mainly by using my memory and glancing around the room at shelves and posters), I emphasized the impact these movies have had on me, my joy at revisiting them, and my desire to see them again. And yet there are so many personally indispensable movies that aren't on my list, either because they got crowded out as I filled up the slots or because I neglected to think of them at that moment.
Looking at the other lists, I think I found a kindred spirit in somebody I don't know, Hans-Dieter Delkus, whose (chronologically ranked) assortment made me smile (even though I haven't seen most of the shorts or even a few of the features):
"Our Hospitality"
"Un Chien Andalou" (Buñuel, 1929)
"Ein blonder Traum" (Martin, 1932 -- co-written by Billy Wilder)
"Liebelei" (Ophuls, 1933)
"Der Firmling" (short starring Karl Valentin, 1934)
"Way Out West" (Laurel & Hardy; Horne, 1937)
"It's a Wonderful Life" (Capra, 1946)
"Begone Dull Care" (animated short; Lambard and McLaren, 1949)
"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (Ford, 1949)
"In a Lonely Place" (Ray, 1950)
"The Far Country" (A. Mann, 1954)
"Touch of Evil"
"Vertigo"
"Imitation of Life" (Sirk, 1959)
"The Ladies Man" (Lewis, 1961)
"Pierrot le fou" (Godard, 1965)
"The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes"
"Free Radicals" (???)
"Days of Heaven" (Malick, 1978)
"Heaven's Gate" (Cimino, 1980)
"Sans Soleil" (Marker, 1983)
"Peggy Sue Got Married" (Coppola, 1986)
"Midnight Run" (Brest, 1988)
"Batman Returns" (Burton, 1992)
"The Kingdom I + II" (von Trier, 1994/1997)
"Nobody's Fool" (Benton, 1994)
"Beautiful Girls" (T. Demme, 1996)
"Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" / "Spirited Away" (Miyazaki, 2001)
"Far From Heaven" (Haynes, 2002)
Like I said, the films on this list that I have seen (especially the inclusion of "Our Hospitality," "Liebelei," "In a Lonely Place," "The Far Country" and "Heaven's Gate") make me all the more curious to check out the ones I haven't seen.
Other contributors include Tom Tykwer ("Perfume"), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck ("The Lives of Others), David Ansen, Chris Fujiwara, Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy, Robert Horton, Kent Jones, Peter Hogue, Harlan Jacobson, David Sterritt and Kenneth Turan.
Got some lieblingsfilme you'd like to share?
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel, 1928)
M (Lang, 1931)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957)
Cat’s Cradle (Brakhage, 1959)
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
Winter Light (Bergman, 1962)
8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
Contempt (Godard, 1963)
Juliet of the Spirits (Fellini, 1965)
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel, 1972)
The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky, 1973)
Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991)
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2000)
Adaptation. (Jonze, 2002)
Gerry (Van Sant, 2002)
I Heart Huckabees (Russell, 2004)
JE: Ich liebe this list, Brandon!
Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources ( Claude Berri, 1986)
Seppuku (Masaki Kobayashi 1962) (aka Harakiri)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Un coeuvr Hiver (Claude Sautet, 1992)
Since the question is favoritest and not necessarily "best", I decided not to overthink my list and go with my gut, which might explain why so many comedies and turn-off-your-brain-and-just-enjoy-it style blockbusters made their way onto my list. I ended up being disappointed with how pedestrian my own picks were -- not to mention the complete absence of Hitchcock, Welles, Godard, Herzog, and Scorcese -- but I can't deny that these are the movies I've probably watched the most, and will rewatch again. I really can't even begin to defend the fact that a Tony Scott film is on my list other than to say I have my reasons, throw myself at the mercy of the blog, and admit that I have a problem.
My list in alphabetical order, because that's how my DVDs are arranged:
8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Amadeus (Forman, 1984)
The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998)
Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986)
The Blues Brothers (Landis, 1980)
Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
Crimson Tide (T. Scott, 1995)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
Election (Payne, 1999)
Evil Dead II (Raimi, 1987)
Fargo (Coen, 1996)
The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
The Fountain (Aronofsky, 2006)
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992)
Horse Feathers (McLeod, 1932)
Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach, 1995)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)
The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)
Network (Lumet, 1976)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
Superman (Donner, 1978)
My favoritest 100 (openly plagarizing the style of Sergio Leone & the Infield Fly Rule)
My 10 favoritest marked with an asterisk.
1920s: Two
Faust (1926)
Nosferatu (1929)
1930s: Five
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
M (1931)
It Happened One Night (1934)
The Thin Man (1934)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
1940s: Three
Pinocchio (1940)
Citizen Kane (1941)*
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
1950s: Eight
Rashomon (1950)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Rear Window (1954)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Searchers (1956)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Vertigo (1958)*
1960s: Twenty
Psycho (1960)
The Innocents (1961)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)*
Belle de Jour (1967)
In Cold Blood (1967)
Marat / Sade (1967)
Persona (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)*
Bullitt (1968)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
1970s: Thirty-Eight
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Patton (1970)
The Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter (1970)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Macbeth (1971)
Shaft (1971)
The French Connection (1971)
Vanishing Point (1971)
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Deliverance (1972)
Frenzy (1972)
Sleuth (1972)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
The Godfather (1972)
Don't Look Now (1973)
Electra Glide in Blue (1973)
Enter the Dragon (1973)
The Exorcist (1973)
Black Christmas (1974)
Chinatown (1974)
The Conversation (1974)*
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Deep Red (1975)
Jaws (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Taxi Driver (1976)*
3 Women (1977)
Eraserhead (1977)*
Suspiria (1977)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
1980s: Seventeen
Airplane! (1980)
Altered States (1980)
Star Wars: Episode V: Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Ninth Configuration (1980)
The Shining (1980)*
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
E.T (1982)
The Thing (1982)
A Christmas Story (1983)
The Terminator (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Clue (1986)
Hope & Glory (1987)
Raising Arizona (1987)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)*
1990s: Five
GoodFellas (1990)
Schindler's List (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Toy Story (1995)
Fargo (1996)*
2000s: Two
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Grizzly Man (2005)
I loved seeing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid on your list, Jim. Speaking of which, I was tempted to make a list of movies I love that some people hate, and I did manage to put Dogville on my list, but it quickly turned into a hodgepodge, sometimes championing lesser known or lesser beloved films, sometimes chiming in with others, sometimes just going with my gut.
Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937)
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938)
The Great Dictator (Chaplin, 1940)
Love Crazy (Conway, 1941)
Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942)
To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch, 1942)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)
One, Two, Three (Wilder, 1961)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Claire’s Knee (Rohmer, 1971)
Going Places (Blier, 1974)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, 1976)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
Kagemusha (Kurosawa, 1980)
Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
Jean de Florette/Manon of the Springs (Berri, 1986)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kaufman, 1988)
Miller’s Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Baraka (Fricke, 1992)
Bitter Moon (Polanski, 1992)
Lones Star (Sayles, 1996)
Yi Yi (Yang, 2000)
Heaven (Tykwer, 2002)
Dogville (von Trier, 2003)
Head-On (Akin, 2004)
Kevin K, I love your list.
Gosh, I love lists. I even love lists of lists.
Here's my Top 30:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1967, Kubrick)
Stroszek (1977, Herzog)
Playtime (1967, Tati)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Resnais)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964, Lester)
Dead Man (1995, Jarmusch)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, Leone)
Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese)
Edvard Munch (1974, Watkins)
A Man Escaped (1956, Bresson)
Fata Morgana (1971, Herzog)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Dreyer)
F for Fake (1974, Welles)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Herzog)
L’avventura (1960, Antonioni)
The Shining (1980, Kubrick)
Sherman’s March (1986, McElwee)
Die Nibelungen (1924, Lang)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Bresson)
Chimes at Midnight (1965, Welles)
Barry Lyndon (1975, Kubrick)
The Exterminating Angel (1962, Bunuel)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Fassbinder)
Night of the Hunter (1955, Laughton)
Dancer in the Dark (2000, Trier)
The Thin Blue Line (1988, Morris)
Stranger than Paradise (1984, Jarmusch)
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Mizoguchi)
L’argent (1983, Bresson)
"Nachkriegsjahrzehnte" means "post-war decades", as it's the plural of "Nachkriegsjahrzehnt" which indeed means "the decade after the war" (usually referring to WWII). Btw, constructing a false superlative like "favoritest" is a mistake in German as well (though a lot of people do tend to say "einzigste"/"onliest"). But now I gotta go and get a copy of that damn Jubiläumsausgabe. ;)
JE: Thanks, Thomas. I know. That was a stretch. These posts are often improvised! Still, Milan -- and my high school German teachers, Herr Boysen and Frau Alire -- would be disappointed in me.
In no particular order (neither preference or year of release)
* Prince of the city (Lumet)
* My neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki)
* Petulia (Lester)
* Little Dieter needs to fly (Herzog)
* The conversation (Coppola)
* Come and see (Klimov)
* Point blank (Boorman)
* The rapture (Tolkin)
* Vertigo (Hitchcock)
* Punch-drunk love (Anderson)
* Prime cut (Ritchie)
* In the bedroom (
* After hours (Scorsese)
* Brazil (Gilliam)
* Once upon a time in America (Leone)
* Videodrome (Cronenberg)
* Blow out (De Palma)
* The big Lebowski (Coen)
* I am Cuba (Kalatozov)
* Spoorloos (Sluizer)
* The night of the hunter (Laughton)
* Night moves (Penn)
* Don't look now (Roeg)
* Five easy pieces (Rafelson)
* The long good friday (Mackenzie)
* De jurk (van Warmerdam)
* Straw dogs (Peckinpah)
* Days of heaven (Malick)
* Cutter's way (Passer)
* Short cuts (Altman)
* 3 women (Altman)
* Stroszek (Herzog)
* The thin blue line (Morris)
* The 'burbs (Dante)
* Mulholland drive (Lynch)
* Pusher trilogy (Refn)
* Breaker Morant (Beresford)
* A tale of two sisters (Kim Jee-Woon)
* Le boucher (Chabrol)
* Babe: Pig in the city (Miller)
* The stunt man (Rush)
* The swimmer (Perry)
* Kairo (Kurosawa)
* Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
* Oldboy (Chan-Wook Park)
* Kwaidan (Kobayashi)
* Army of shadows (Melville)
Phew.....that's quite a long list.a
Just some Spitzfindigkeiten:
(1) Nachkriegsjahrzehnte = The decades after the war (because "Jahrzehnte" is plural)
(2) "Es ist mein neues Lieblingswort" (because "Lieblingswort" is neuter, not feminine; all nouns are capitalized)
If you are interested in more truths about the German language I recommend Mark Twains highly entertaining take on the topic:
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html
And, finally, some of my Lieblingsfilme:
"M" (Lang, 1931)
"Citizen Kane" (Welles, 1941)
"Casablanca" (Curtiz, 1942)
"Los Olvidados" (Bunuel, 1950)
"Twelve Angry Men" (Lumet, 1957)
"Vertigo" (Hitchcock, 1958)
"C'era una volta il West" / "Once Upon a Time in the West" (Leone, 1968)
"The Wild Bunch" (Peckinpah, 1968)
"Taxi Driver" (Scorsese, 1976)
"The Godfather" (Coppola, 1972)
"Deliverance" (Boorman, 1972)
"The Holy Mountain" (Jodorowsky, 1973)
"Jaws" (Spielberg, 1975)
"Days of Heaven" (Malick, 1978)
"Alien" (Scott, 1979)
"Apocalypse Now" (Coppola, 1979)
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" (Spielberg, 1981)
"Koyaanisqatsi" (Reggio, 1982)
"Fitzcarraldo" (Herzog, 1982)
"Paris, Texas" (Wenders, 1984)
"Die Hard" (McTiernan, 1988)
"The Silence of the Lambs" (Demme, 1991)
"Barton Fink" (Coen, 1991)
"The Unforgiven" (Eastwood, 1992)
"Sonatine" (Kitano, 1993)
"Lone Star" (Sayles, 1996)
"Breaking the Waves" (Von Trier, 1996)
"Rushmore" (Anderson, 1998)
"Eyes Wide Shut" (Kubrick, 1999)
"Magnolia" (Anderson, 1999)
"Mulholland Dr." (Lynch, 2001)
"Y tu mamá también" (Cuarón, 2001)
JE: Gracias -- er, danke -- Barton. I'll fix. (BTW, I didn't know you spoke German. I thought that was just Charlie....)
I tried to make it a mere 30 Lieblingsfilme but found that downright impossible, so this list has 58 entries – and would’ve been much longer if I hadn’t decided to stick to one film per director. Unfortunately, some directors whose work I love and admire (Avery, Larry Cohen, De Palma, Ford, Leisen, Morris, Siodmak, Visconti etc. etc.) didn‘t even make the list. Documentaries, animated films and shorts also had to be excluded. So here we go:
All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
Beautiful Girls (Ted Demme, 1996)
Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952)
Blood Simple (Joel Coen, 1983)
Boogie Nights (P.T. Anderson, 1997)
Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer, 1981)
Day of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1985)
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
Diner (Barry Levinson, 1982)
The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves, 1989)
Garde à vue (Claude Miller, 1981)
The Getaway (Sam Peckinpah, 1972)
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1948)
Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998)
The Hitcher (Robert Harmon, 1985)
Independence Day (Robert Mandel, 1983)
It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl, 1946)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
Little Odessa (James Gray, 1994)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (George Miller, 1981)
The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952)
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1983)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges,
The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)
Passion Fish (John Sayles, 1992)
A Personal Journey through American Movies (Martin Scorsese/Michael Henry Wilson, 1995)
The Pledge (Sean Penn, 2000)
Prince of the City (Sidney Lumet, 1981)
Les Quatre cent coups (François Truffaut, 1959)
Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (Wolfgang Staudte, 1960)
Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder) (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)
Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)
Singin‘ in the Rain (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1952)
Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972)
Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981)
State of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990)
The Sure Thing (Rob Reiner, 1985)
Tadellöser & Wolff (Eberhard Fechner, 1975)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Busby Berkeley, 1948)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Tucker: A Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988)
Way Out West (James W. Horne, 1937)
The World According to Garp (George Roy Hill, 1982)
Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)
Young Man with a Horn (Michael Curtiz, 1949)
"Sansho the Bailiff"! I have that netflixed, can't wait to see it. It's part of my continuing journey through that era of Japanese films - "Kill!" is exceptional if you haven't seen it Jim. And anyone who puts Batman Returns on a list deserves mention.
My list...in order as the come off the top o' my head...which it seems is the best way to do this...would you say favoritest my be defined as if the movie came on TV, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself from watching it? That would be my definition.
City Lights (Chaplin)
Bladerunner (Scott)
The Conversation (Coppola)
A Touch of Evil (Welles)
Die Hard (McTiernan)
Rashomon (Kurosawa)
In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai)
Breaking the Waves (Trier)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazake)
Ghostbusters (Reitman)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
Life of Brian (Python)
Alien (Scott)
The Shining (Kubrick)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
The Insider (Mann)
Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter)
400 Blows/Antoine and Collette (Truffaut)
The Bicycle Thief (De Sica)
Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman)
The Passion of Anna (Bergman)
The Fifth Element (Besson)
Dark City (Proyas)
Babe (Noonan)
12 Monkeys (Gilliam)
Lady Vengeance (Park)
Zatoichi (Pick any of'em)
Notorious (Hitchcock)
I know! That's 31, but I couldn't leave off Notorious...
Raaargh!
Raiders of the Lost Arc (Spielberg)
Okay, I'm done.
...
princessandthewarrior(twyker)andsanjuro(kurosawa)
Stray Dog (Kurosawa)
Dammit!
Mine:
Fanny & Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger, 1943)
This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
Stolen Kisses (Truffaut, 1968)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)
Sans Soleil (Marker, 1982)
Russian Ark (Sokurov, 2002)
Naked (Leigh, 1993)
I Fidanzati (Olmi, 1963)
Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980)
L'Emploi du Temps "Time Out" (Cantet, 2001)
Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)
Vive Le Tour (Malle, 1962)
Camera (Cronenberg, 2000)
Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
George Washington (Green, 2000)
O Lucky Man! (Anderson, 1973)
Le Mépris "Contempt" (Godard, 1973)
Immediate-response style, no particular order, one film per director:
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero)
Docks of New York (Josef Von Sternberg)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes)
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Tim Burton)
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
California Split (Robert Altman)
Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling)
Boiling Point (Takeshi Kitano)
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
Perceval (Eric Rohmer)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
Wanda (Barbara Loden)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow)
La Ceremonie (Claude Chabrol)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah)
Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman)
The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
La Chienne (Jean Renoir)
High Hopes (Mike Leigh)
My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)
This list changes hourly, but I'll spare you that.
Does it have to be restricted to thirty films? So many great titles left off, but if so:
Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993)
American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)
The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994)
It's a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
M (Lang, 1931)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
Pleasantville (Ross, 1998)
The Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)
Fargo (Coen, 1996)
JFK (Stone, 1991)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Shame (Bergman, 1968)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Memento (Nolan, 2001)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
And others I REALLY want to have on the list:
The General (Keaton, 1927)
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Minghella, 1999)
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
Babe (Noonan, 1995)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
And many, many others...
Make it 31. I have to add Inland Empire (David Lynch).
Off the top of my head, in chronological order:
1. City Lights (Chaplin)
2. Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton)
3. Metropolis (Lang)
4. La règle du jeu (Renoir)
5. The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
6. Citizen Kane (Welles)
7. Casablanca (Curtiz)
8. Double Indemnity (Wilder)
9. Rashomon (Kurosawa)
10. Rear Window (Hitchcock)
11. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
12. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
13. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
14. Jules et Jim (Truffaut)
15. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
16. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
17. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
18. The Graduate (Nichols)
19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
20. Easy Rider (Hopper)
21. The Godfather & The Godfather II (F. Coppola)
22. American Graffiti (Lucas)
23. Annie Hall (Allen)
24. Apocalypse Now (F. Coppola)
25. This is Spinal Tap (Reiner)
26. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)
27. Fight Club (Fincher)
28. Talk to Her (Aldomovar)
29. Lost in Translation (S. Coppola)
30. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
I know I'm missing some major ones, but these are all up there in my personal faves.
I won't read anyone else's list, as they will no doubt remind me of all the ones I forgot....
William B., not reading the other lists is good policy-- it'll drive you crazy, both with pleasure and with too much thwacking yourself on the forhead with the palm of your hand over movies you should have thought of. And I can attest to this because I didn't have your strength or resolve. Reading all the lists is just too much fun! It was incredibly annoying to realize I had flat-out forgot about sure contenders like In the Mood for Love, Gerry, Election, Naked Lunch, The Leopard and Two-Lane Blacktop for my own list. But I was tickled as hell to see Chris Noonan's Babe, George Miller's Babe: Pig in the City and Joe Dante's The 'burbs mentioned above amongst all those worthy titles.
Can I do my list over again?!
How can something be off the top of your head in chronological order? That's a lot of work!
In chronological order, and limited to one film per director:
The General (Keaton/Bruckman)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
M (Lang)
L'Atalante (Vigo)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
The Lady Eve (Sturges)
Double Indemnity (Wilder)
Notorious (Hitchcock)
The Red Shoes (Powell/Pressburger)
Orpheus (Cocteau)
The Third Man (Reed)
The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
The War Game (Watkins)
Belle de Jour (Bunuel)
Play Time (Tati)
Week End (Godard)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
The Mother and the Whore (Eustache)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman)
Nashville (Altman)
Annie Hall (Allen)
Gates of Heaven (Morris)
Come and See (Klimov)
Decalogue (Kieslowski)
Satantango (Tarr)
The New World (Malick)
Did I get my list in on time to be included? I've totally forgotten what I put down, and if I'm in there I'd love to know what thirty films were on my list!
JE: Hi Andy! Yep, you're in there. You should be getting a copy of the magazine, but in the meantime here's a reminder of what you listed (in chronological order):
"La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc"
"Las Hurdes"
"Top Hat"
"Citizen Kane"
"The Red Shoes"
"Bakushu" ("Early Summer")
"Singin' in the Rain"
"Bob Le Flambeur"
"Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut" ("A Man Escaped")
"The Searchers"
"Mon Oncle"
"The Very Eye of Night"
"Apur Sansar" ("The World of Apu")
"La Jetee"
"Jules et Jim"
"Le Mepris"
"Il Vangelo secondo Matteo" ("The Gospel According to St. Matthew")
"Kustom Kar Kommandos"
"Il Buono, il bruto, il cattivo"
"Le Demoiselles de Rochefort"
"Playtime"
"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"
"McCabe & Mrs. Miller"
"Minnie and Moscowitz"
"The Last Wave"
"Yeelen"
"Majo no Kakkyubin" ("Kiki's Delivery Service")
"Groundhog Day"
"Sonatine"
"Punch-Drunk Love"
Bravo! There are six on here that I've never seen.
The first 30 favorites that came to mind (because if I think too long I'll get more than 30, and I hate pitting them against each other to answer "which do I like more?")
Trouble with Harry (Alfred Hitchcock)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)
Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson)
The Exorcist (William Friedkin)
War of the World's (Steven Spielberg)
Suspiria (Dario Argento)
Bride of Frankenstien (James Whale)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Big Fish (Tim Burton)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
Halloween (John Carpenter)
Exorcism of Emily Rose (Scott Derrickson)
The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby)
Alien (Ridley Scott)
Patton (Franklin Schaffner)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron)
The Untouchables (Brian De palma)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro)
Nosferatu (Werner Herzog)
Nosferatu (F.W. Marnau)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
Die Hard (John McTiernan)
The Descent (Neil Marshall)
Domino (Tony Scott)
Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi)
Bubba Ho-Tep (Don Coscarelli)
Amelie (Jean Pierre Jeunet)
What is this restricting yourself to "one film per director" nonsense? To showcase your breadth of film experience? Don't be that guy. This is about favoritest movies and your list becomes dishonest if you start using restrictions.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)
Bananas (Allen, 1973)
Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004)
The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998)
Captain Blood (Curtiz, 1935)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (Carl Reiner, 1982)
Double Indemnity (WIlder, 1944)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
I Vitelloni (Fellni, 1953)
Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach, 1995)
King of Hearts (de Broca, 1967)
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
The Lion King (Disney, 1994)
Love and Death (Allen, 1975)
Men in Black (Levinson, 1998)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)\
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
The Sandlot (Evans, 1992)
Shall We Dance (Sandrich, 1937)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
Swing Time (Stevens, 1936)
Trading Places (Landis, 1983)
When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989)
What's Up, Doc (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Jason: Speaking only for myself and not any of the other people who limited themselves to one film per director, I forced the rule upon myself not to "showcase (my) breadth of film experience," but to include as many of my favorite directors and as much variety as possible. I figured that would be a much more honest representation of my favorites than an all-Cassavetes-Herzog-Altman-Romero list. Why such an attitude about letting people decide for themselves how to make their own lists? Don't be that guy.
The King of Comedy
Bride of Frankenstein
The Hudsucker Proxy
Rio Bravo
Bringing up Baby
A Matter of Life and Death
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Sullivan's Travels
Greed
Detour
M
Dawn of the Dead
The Searchers
Bring Me the Head of
Alfredo Garcia
The Rules of the Game
The Lost Weekend
King Kong
Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (57)
The Wizard of Oz
Mullholland Dr.
The Evil Dead Trilogy
(cheating, I know)
Vertigo
The General
Citizen Kane
Grave of the Fireflies
Dumbo
The Masque of the Red Death
Robocop
Singin' in the Rain
Freaks
1. Seven Samurai
2. Chungking Express
3. Casablanca
4. The Rules Of The Game
5. Touch Of Evil
6. Manhattan
7. Singin' In The Rain
8. The Searchers
9. Pierrot Le Fou
10. The Big Lebowski
11. Millennium Mambo
12. Dr. Strangelove
13. Do The Right Thing
14. The Empire Strikes Back
15. Three Colors: Blue
16. Miller's Crossing
17. A Woman Is A Woman
18. Once Upon A Time In The West
19. Playtime
20. 8 1/2
21. Au hasard Balthazar
22. Sunrise
23. House Of Flying Daggers
24. The New World
25. The Third Man
26. North By Northwest
27. Ugetsu
28. Hard-Boiled
29. Duck Soup
30. Black Narcissus
Jim, pretty nice list I gotta tell you (You can't ever have too much Keaton), but I have to say I was surprised that I didn't see "Unforgiven" on your list as you had recently talked about it being one of the few great recent Best Picture winners. No matter, it occupies a firm spot on my list as the greatest of all westerns. Also there's 29 other movies on my list (I'm not sure why I love the list of 30 idea so much, but I do). Chronological:
The General (Keaton, Cline, 1927)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1943)
Singin’ in the Rain (Donen, Kelly, 1952)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
On The Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Jones, Gilliam, 1975)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)
Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)
Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale, Wise, 1991)
Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (Zaillian, 1993)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Dead Man Walking (Robbins, 1995)
Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
Out of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998)
Almost Famous (Crowe, 2000)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2005)
Children of Men (Cauron, 2007)
Meine Lieblingsfilme immer ändern sich selbest. Deswegen, Jim, bitte bedenk daß meine Listen fast immer vollständig willkürlich sind.
Ohne weiteres Aufheben, 10 meiner gegenwärtigen Lieblingsfilme:
- Casablanca
- Citizen Kane
- The King of Comedy
- Withnail and I
- The Lives of Others
- Miller's Crossing
- Don't Look Now
- Munich
- This is Spinal Tap
- 24-Hour Party People
Jason - Brilliant list. Kudos, sir.
Re: the one film per director policy, I'm with Jim here. I could just as easily have posted a list comprised of 20% Buster Keaton movies, but after the third or fourth Keaton title someone could very well have said "OK, we get it, you like Keaton. But what else do you like?"
Besides, 30 isn't that many movies, and certainly not enough to encompass all the filmmakers I love. I know I had a hard time parting with my favorite films by folks like Scorsese, Ozu, Kieslowski, and DePalma, among others.
Finally, I can only speak for myself here, but I'm not trying to show off or anything. These are just movies I love.
Thanks! It's amazing how when you look at a list like that after enough time has passed it seems like it must have been made by someone else. I think to myself, Ah! We both like Bresson! But I really prefer Pickpocket or Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. And why Kiki's Delivery Service instead of Spirited Away or Porco Rosso? And why no Keaton?
Don't want to read other lists, don't want to be totally redundant, don't want to be "that guy" or "that other guy". What to do, what to do, what to do?
"Mabarosi"
"Ju Dou"
"Potemkin"
"Pelle the Conqueror"
"The Conformist"
"Manon of the Spring"
"Taxi Driver"
"King of Comedy"
"Rear Window"
"You Can Count on Me"
"Bad News Bears"
"His Girl Friday"
"Citizen Kane"
"Miracle of Morgan's Creek"
"The Lady Eve"
"Philadelphia Story"
Michael Apted "Up" series
"Jaws"
"Maltese Falcon"
"Apocalypse Now"
"The Conversation"
"Short Cuts"
"Secret Honor"
"Night of the Hunter"
"Out of the Past"
"Big Lebowski"
"Fargo"
"Raising Arizona"
"Stop Making Sense"
"Hoop Dreams"
"Royal Tenenbaums"
and the rest....
Andy,
Kiki's Delivery service is exquisite...actually everything by Mayazaki is. In most Chinatown locales you can get a boxed set of all of his works...up til Spirited Away I think.
Since we're counting favorites, not greatest, my pics land mostly in the modern era. Clearly, I was born in the 70s. =)
Top 27:
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Akira (Otomo)
Bully For Bugs (C. Jones)
Chasing Amy (K. Smith)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Dawn of the Dead (Romero)
Dazed and Confused (Linklater)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
E.T. (Spielberg)
The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
Evil Dead 2 (Raimi)
Life of Brian (Gilliam/T. Jones)
The Man With Two Brains (C. Reiner)
Mars Attacks! (Burton)
Nights of Cabiria (Fillini)
Notorious (Hitchcock)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg)
Re-Animator (Gordon)
Robocop (Verhoeven)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Sleeping Beauty (Disney)
Space Madness (Kricfalusi)
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock)
They Live (Carpenter)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
Yojimbo (Kurosawa)
Bending the rules:
The Coen Brothers' oevure (but no single film would be on my faves list)
David Cronenberg's oeuvre (but no single film would be on my faves list)
Brian DePalma's oeuvre (but no single film would be on my faves list)
Just missed:
Amadeus (Foreman)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
Pan's Labyrinth (Del Toro)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Vacation (Ramis)
The Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
I love these lists. These are my favorites, in order.
1. Goodfellas
2. Boogie Nights
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Crimes and Misdemeaners
5. Short Cuts
6. Jacob's Ladder
7. Aliens
8. The Big Lebowski
9. The Godfather
10. Swingers
11. Prince of the City
12. Sunset Blvd.
13. The Deer Hunter
14. Dr. Stragelove
15. Videodrome
16. North by Northwest
17. All About Eve
18. The Battle of Algiers
19. Requiem for a Dream
20. Bully
21. Singin' in the Rain
22. Discreet Charm of the Bourgoise
23. The Rules of Attraction
24. Amores Perros
25. The Third Man
26. Z
27. Casino
28. The Thin Red Line
29. JFK
30. Go
Hard to leave off:
Stand by Me, After Hours, Heat, 25th Hour
It's interesting to me how many titles repeat on these lists. Since these are "favs", I would expect a wider variety of tastes. Is art truly subjective? Or can these movies objectively be called great? Keep up the great work Jim, I love the blog!
Off the top of my head in chronological order: yes, it's a particular talent. That and I just wrote down 30 and then rearranged them.
Movies I felt horrible for leaving off, once I thought of them: Taxi Driver, Singin' in the Rain, La Dolce Vita, Un chien andalou, La jetee, The Awful Truth, etc. But any list of 30 faves is gonna be too short.
My theory is that just about everyone has a "pet" favoritest film, not necessarily your #1 film, but rather a film that you believe most people (even cinephiles) haven't heard of, haven't seen or just don't think of as one of the greatest films ever.
My pet favoritest film is "Edvard Munch" by Peter Watkins. It was largely unavailable to audiences until the DVD release by New Yorker/Project X a couple years ago. Watkins is a phenomenal and singular director, and "Edvard Munch" is easily his greatest achievement.
It is the greatest film about art and the creative process that I have ever seen. It is also the greatest biopic (though I hesitate to apply that term here) I have seen. Watkins freeflowing mix of "documentary" and fiction techniques, and the frequent use of direct address to his characters is eerily effective. It's a true masterpiece that no longer need be forgotten thanks to DVD.
What's your pet favoritest film?
I'm really enjoying these lists. My 15 favorite films (the ones I keep returning to time and time again, in perhaps no particular order):
Dawn of the Dead (Romero)
Ikiru (Kurosawa)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Fitzcarraldo/ Aguirre (Herzog)
Scenes From a Marriage (Bergman)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Once Upon a Time in America (Leone)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Peckinpah)
Paris, Texas (Winders)
Keoma (Castellari)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Duck Soup (Marxes)
2001 (Kubrick)
The Searchers (Ford)
House by the Cemetery (Fulci)
Here are my favorites by decade. (I'm only 19 so I'll start with the fifties.)
1950's- On the Waterfront,Seven Samurai,The Seventh Seal
1960's- Breathless,Bonnie and Clyde,8 1/2,Jules and Jim,Dr. Strangelove,2001:A Space Odyssey
1970's(the greatest decade for movies)-M*A*S*H*,
McCabe & Mrs. Miller,The Godfather Part I and II,Mean Streets,The Long Goodbye,Nashville,Jaws,Taxi Driver,Manhattan,Apocalpse
Now,Star Wars,The Empire Strikes Back
1980's(when movies started sucking)-Raging Bull,E.T.,Platoon,Casualtis of War,Raiders of the Lost Ark
1990's-Goodfellas,Pulp Fiction,The Shawshank Redemption,Fargo,Three Kings
In the interest of getting some different titles, here is a list of my favorite movies that almost never appear on other people's lists:
(in no order)
The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)
Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
A Little Romance (George Roy Hill, 1979)
Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Louis Malle, 1957)
Passion Fish (John Sayles, 1992)
The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan, 1991)
Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1986)
Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)
Nobody's Fool (Robert Benton, 1994)
Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)
The General (John Boorman, 1998)
Heist (David Mamet, 2001)
The Indian Runner (Sean Penn, 1991)
Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, 2005)
High Hopes (Mike Leigh, 1989)
Into the West (Mike Newell, 1993)
Q&A (Sidney Lumet, 1990)
A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1986)
The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith, 1951)
The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)
Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)
Ripley's Game (Liliana Cavani, 2002)
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)
Harvey (Henry Koster, 1950)
Next to my DVD player are a few small stacks of DVDs that I rarely bother to re-shelve. When I don't feel like probing my mood and then carefully and painfully deliberating over which of the many many shelved films I want to watch, I'll instead drop in one that's sitting by my player, knowing that I'll always be in the mood for it and will always enjoy it no matter how often I've watched it before.
So, reading off the titles next to my DVD player in no particular order:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Vanishing Point (1971)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Gumball Rally (1976)
Chinatown (1974)
Star Wars (1977)
Duck Soup (1933)
Lord Love a Duck (1966)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961)
Walkabout (1971)
Aguirre, The Wrath of God(1972)
O Lucky Man! (1973)
Lilies of the Field (1963)
Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)
Run, Lola, Run (1998)
Alien (1979)
Day of the Jackal (1973)
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Zardoz (1974)
Satyricon (1969)
Easy Rider (1969)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Marat/Sade (1967)
The Producers (1968)
Animal House (1978)
Road Warrior (1981)
Blowup (1966)
Summer Lovers (1982)
Titus (1999)
Electric Dreams (1984)
Flesh Gordon (1974)
Magic Christian (1969)
The Commitments (1991)
All That Jazz (1979)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Metropolis (1927)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
Dragonslayer (1981)
Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Clockwork Orange (1971)
Barbarella (1968)
Greaser's Palace (1972)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Theater of Blood (1973)
Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
King Kong (1933)
The General (1927)
The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)
Monkey Business (1931)
Jim, this has been a lot of fun. Like many of your commenters, I was kicking myself for movies I later realized I had left off. Most painful were Harold and Maude, Wings of Desire, and The Mission. How could I have forgotten them?
Someone commented about how much overlap there was between lists, but I was impressed by the wide variety. In fact, for fun, I made up another list of my favorite 30, this time culling only from the lists on this post. I didn't repeat any movies or diectors (I'm in the "one film per director" camp) from my original list. Even with those restrictions, I would be happy to put any of these on a list of my favorites:
Horse Feathers (McLeod, 1932)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressburger, 1943)
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969)
Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971)
The Parallax Veiw (Pakula, 1974)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)
The Ninth Configuration (Blatty, 1980)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Blow Out (De Palma, 1981)
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985)
Near Dark (Bigelow, 1987)
Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987)
Withnail and I (Robinson, 1987)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
The Rapture (Tolkin, 1991)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992)
Naked (Leigh, 1993)
Short Cuts (Altman, 1993)
The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994)
The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999)
Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001)
Talk to Her (Almadovar, 2002)
Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004)
And I hope that Michael Stigdom will take note that TEN of these films are from the eighties. Maybe movies didn't start sucking in that decade after all.
A little surprised by these omissions:
Grand Illusion
Gone with the Wind
Sound of Music
American in Paris
Anything by Michael Moore
Anything by John Hughes
Other than the first, are these movies merely guilty pleasures, enjoyed only by those that don't read this blog, or out of fashion? I'm not sure I would include any of these (other than Grand Illusion) among my Lieblingsfilme, but maybe it's because I, myself, would be too embarrassed to admit that Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is still one of my top 30.
P.S. Was in Salzburg a month ago and chose not to attend the Sound of Music tour, but I may have been the only one. Where are all those people now?
Favoritest!
30. Dellamorte Dell'Amore (Michele Soavi, 1994)
29. Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1990)
28. The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
27. Fantasia (James Algar et al., 1950)
26. The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)
25. The Dogs of War (John Irvin, 1981)
24. La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel, 1972)
23. The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)
22. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
21. Multi-Facial (Vin Diesel, 1994)
20. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
19. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
18. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
17. The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, 1991)
16. A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)
15. River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1987)
14. Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1978)
13. Se7en (David Fincher, 1997)
12. Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001)
11. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
10. Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1980)
9. Profondo Rosso (Dario Argento, 1975)
8. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
7. The Return of the Living Dead (Dan O'Bannon, 1985)
6. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
5. Begotten (Edmund Elias Merhige, 1991)
4. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968)
3. Closetland (Radha Bharadwaj, 1991)
2. Hotaru no Haka (Isao Takahata, 1988)
1. Before Night Falls (Julian Schnabel, 2000)
(The full 100 list, and defense of the indefensible, at xterminal.livejournal.com/tag/recommendations)
About a month ago I did my 100 favorite films list in response to a complaint that I was giving away far to many 5 star reviews on netflix and surely I must have liked some better than others. Here is the top thirty (note: the top 20 always seem to land in the top 20 when I have to name favorite films).
1. Ran (That's a real burning building Nakadai is walking out of)
2. Spirited Away (made me crime 5 different times)
3. Chinatown (best ending ever)
4. The Wild Bunch (best action film ever)
5. The Apartment (Touched me in true hollywood fashion)
6. Titus (best Shakespeare on celluloid)
7. Reds (my favorite romance movie)
8. Waking Life (most rewatchable)
9. Short Cuts (Did what magnolia did only better and first)
10. JFK (tied for most rewatchable)
11. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (nuff said)
12. Fantasia (Disney's crowning achievement)
13. The Fog Of War (2nd most rewatchable film)
14. The Empire Strikes Back (I like dark endings)
15. Bound (1st film to make me feel true suspense)
16. Rear Window (2nd film to make me feel true suspense)
17. The Adventures Of Robin Hood (purest of Hollywood)
18. His Girl Friday (mind blowing dialogue)
19. The War Zone (most heart wrenching film)
20. The Ice Storm (the best ensemble cast outside of an Altman movie)
21. The Lion In Winter (O'Toole and Hepburn 'nuff said)
22. The Seven Samurai (watch this before you watch the Magnificent Seven and then compare them, ouch!)
23. Annie Hall (Woody's best)
24. Jackie Brown (most stylish film)
25. Unforgiven (the first to alert me to the power of cinema)
26. Alien (I love the pacing on this film)
27. Onibaba (one of the few truly scary films I have seen)
28. The Manchurian Candidate (The first film I saw where I really noticed the acting was on another level)
29. Once (best musical)
30. The Contender (an unexplainable watchability)
I'm very pleased with the result of the poll. In 1995 Ford, Hawks and Hitchcock were the most voted directors and they are my favorites.
Jim, who are in the ranking of directors this time?
What about other known contributors?
What 30 films are in the ballot of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck?
my 28 favoritest, alphabetically:
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, Spielberg)
American Beauty (1999, Mendez)
Annie Hall (1977, Allen)
Avalon (1990, Levinson)
Barton Fink (1991, Coen)
Before Sunrise (1995, Linklater)
Brazil (1985, Gilliam)
Breaking The Waves (1996, Von Trier)
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1968, Hill)
Cast Away (2000, Zemeckis)
Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989, Allen)
Days Of Heaven (1978, Malick)
Dr. Strangelove; Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1963, Kubrick)
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982, Spielberg)
The English Patient (1996, Minghella)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Kubrick)
The Godfather (1972, Coppola)
The Godfather, Part II (1974, Coppola)
The Ice Storm (1997, Lee)
Memento (2001, Nolan)
Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch)
Ragtime (1981, Forman)
The Remains Of The Day (1993, Ivory)
South Park: Bigger, Longer, And Uncut (1999, Parker)
The Straight Story (1999, Lynch)
Time Bandits (1981, Gilliam)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
United 93 (2006, Greengrass)
Great fun reading these lists...
I don't like doing movie list but I have chosen a selected group of movies that have stayed in mind and singed to my soul the most. They come in no particular order
Casablanca
The Godfather Part I and II
The Empire Strikes Back
Hoop Dreams
Pulp Fiction
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Beauty and the Best
Reservoir Dogs
Raging Bull
Goodfellas
Apocalypse Now
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Untouchables
I know people are going to make fun of my irrevent choices but I'm sticking to my guns I thought these were superb movies and have made movie watching worthwhile.
This my list of essential films because favorite is a weak word
Casablanca
Apocalypse Now
The Empire Strikes Back
Strangers on a Train
The Godfather Part II
Blade Runner
Goodfellas
Dumbo
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Untouchables
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Good,The Bad and The Ugly
Key Largo
Paths of Glory
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Dead Again
A Hard Day's Night
Beauty and the Beast
Easy Rider
I decided to update my favorites list because the first two above which were done by me(SCE002 was also me) were done when I had an uninformed perspective and didn't allow myself to put things into perspective.However,some films that were those previous lists are on this one.
My Top 20 Favorites(as of 2008)
The Seventh Seal(Bergman,1957)
Star Wars(Lucas,1977)
The Empire Strikes Back(Kershner,1980)
The Godfather(Coppola,1972)
The Godfather Part II(Coppola,1974)
Aguirre,The Wrath of God(Herzog,1972)
Schindler's List(Spielberg,1993)
The Untouchables(DePalma,1987)
Goodfellas(Scorsese,1990)
A Night at the Opera(Wood,1935)
Get Shorty(Sonnenfeld,1995)
Raiders of the Lost Ark(Spielberg,1981)
North by Northwest(Hitchcock,1959)
Strangers on a Train(Hitchcock,1951)
Rio Bravo(Hawks,1959)
The Outlaw Josey Wales(Eastwood,1976)
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade(Spielberg,1989)
The Dead Zone(Cronenberg,1984)
Apocalypse Now(Coppola,1979)
Mean Streets(Scorsese,1974)
Airplane(Abrahams,1980)