It’s difficult to pick my 50 favorite films, but here’s an honest try anyway. My fellow blogger and friend Melissa, at Melissa’s Imaginarium suggested a He Said, She Said list comparison. It sounded like a good chance to examine the difference between guy movies/girl movies. Unsurprisingly, mine is a bit crime film heavy, but I enjoyed mentioning some of the films that I may never cover at Criminal Movies. For that reason, I tried to cover all the genres I typically like, and I'm sure I could make a top 50 in each of these categories without a problem.
I wasn’t worried about picking the “best films of all time” as there are plenty of organizations to do that. These are simply those films that hold up no matter how many times I’ve seen them which makes them the best films to me. “The Avengers,” for example, may not be a landmark of cinema to some, but it certainly made me feel like kid who got what he’d always wanted, not many films have done that. These are not ranked in any particular order, as doing that would take years and besides, with many of these, I just couldn’t pick one over the other.
I wasn’t worried about picking the “best films of all time” as there are plenty of organizations to do that. These are simply those films that hold up no matter how many times I’ve seen them which makes them the best films to me. “The Avengers,” for example, may not be a landmark of cinema to some, but it certainly made me feel like kid who got what he’d always wanted, not many films have done that. These are not ranked in any particular order, as doing that would take years and besides, with many of these, I just couldn’t pick one over the other.
Go check out the “She Said” portion over at Mel’s place, and compare away.
Feel free to express outrage at what was or wasn’t included here. There are hundreds more I would have liked to include, but I think this is a good representation at the moment.
Crime:
On the Waterfront
Thief
Get Carter
Double Indemnity
Out of the Past
Rear Window
Touch of Evil
The Maltese Falcon
Le Samourai
The Conversation
Cool Hand Luke
A History of Violence
The Asphalt Jungle
Taxi Driver
Point Blank
The Godfather
Rififi
The Long Goodbye
Goodfellas
Pulp Fiction
Bad Lieutenant
The Grifters
Heat
The French Connection
The Last Life in the Universe
American History X
Strangers on a Train
Man on the Train
North By Northwest
Die Hard
Drama:
My Life As a Dog
The 400 Blows
Henry Fool
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Barton Fink
Dancer In The Dark
Lost Highway
Down By Law
Being There
In A Lonely Place
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring…
Glengarry Glen Ross
Lost In Translation
The Fall
The Natural
Cinema Paradiso
The Swimmer
Life Is Beautiful
The Razor’s Edge
There Will Be Blood
Fight Club
It’s a Wonderful Life
Citizen Kane
The Bicycle Thieves
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
SciFi
Blade Runner
Alien
The Fifth Element
Star Wars (original trilogy)
Gojira
The Matrix
Back to the Future (trilogy)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth
Dimension
Spider Man (1 and 2)
The Avengers
2001: A Space Odyssey
Horror
The Evil Dead (trilogy)
The Wicker Man
The Exorcist
The Vanishing
The Night of the Hunter
The Shining
Spider
Jaws
Pi
Comedy
This Is Spinal Tap
Annie Hall
Groundhog Day
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Ghostbusters
The Big Lebowski
Life of Brian
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Airplane!
The Royal Tenenbaums
Beetlejuice
Clerks
Westerns:
Once Upon A Time In the West
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Dollars Trilogy)
Unforgiven
The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance
