My friend Dawn at Tales from the Motherland put together a very declarative list of the best movies ever (in her opinion). And I was jealous. So I slapped this together very quickly to ease my feelings.

My list is entirely subjective (including being subject to change at a moment’s notice) and includes only American or English language films at this time. I’m tempted to make a separate list just for nonfiction films but documentaries are included here at this point (they might be over-represented).

This is a list of movies I love that I also think are objectively good movies (I have a long list of movies I love that I know are not, objectively, that good—movies like Mallrats). I have tried to pull a handful of titles from areas that are under-represented in these types of lists (particularly movies written by/directed by/or about women) because I happen to love those movies more than movies about how old white guys are sad. This is No Country For Old Men, if you get what I’m saying (with a bad movie pun).

  1. All About Eve
  2. Almost Famous
  3. American Movie
  4. Arsenic and Old Lace
  5. The Awful Truth
  6. Avatar (only in 3D; not worth watching otherwise)
  7. The Avengers (and the Marvel Superhero Series overall is far superior to Tolkien or Lucas—blasphemy, I know! But I grew up reading Marvel comics and was not fixated on Star Wars at all.)
  8. Back to the Future (the first one only)
  9. Ball of Fire
  10. Being John Malkovich
  11. The Big Lebowski
  12. Blade Runner
  13. Boogie Nights
  14. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
  15. Bring It On (Or: Election)
  16. Brokeback Mountain
  17. Capturing the Friedmans (there are literally 15 documentaries that are on par with this one that I could put here)
  18. Cinema Paradiso (crap, I snuck in a foreign film; let’s put Hugo here as an alternate and a tribute to the love of early cinema)
  19. Citizen Kane
  20. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, aliens, etc.)
  21. Clueless (female director, great cast)
  22. Coffy (blaxploitation with Pam Grier, who is ON FIRE on screen)
  23. The Commitments
  24. Casablanca
  25. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (because you have to have Liz & Paul Newman at the their most beautiful on this list somewhere and I love this  movie); alternately: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
  26. Chinatown (Nicholson at the height of his powers)
  27. City Lights
  28. The Departed (Nicholson now playing a variant of the Huston character from Chinatown!)
  29. Double Indemnity (Stanwyck’s performance! OMG)
  30. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  31. Fight Club
  32. Finding Nemo (probably the best of the modern animated films thought Tangled is a close second)
  33. The Fog of War (I LOVE documentaries)
  34. 4 Little Girls
  35. Ghostbusters
  36. Ghost World
  37. The Godfather (and Part II)
  38. Gone with the Wind
  39. Goodfellas
  40. Greed (1924)
  41. Harold and Maude
  42. Heavenly Creatures
  43. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (amazing music)
  44. His Girl Friday
  45. How to Marry a Millionaire
  46. Hustle and Flow
  47. It’s a Wonderful Life
  48. The Kid Stays in the Picture
  49. Kill Bill Vol. 1
  50. King of Kong
  51. L.A. Confidential
  52. The Lady Eve
  53. Laura
  54. A League of their Own (Tom Hanks has to represented on this list so why not with a female director?)
  55. Little Shop of Horrors (1986) (my second favorite musical)
  56. Lost in Translation (lady director; starting to be surprised that Scarlet Johansson is on this list so many times)
  57. The Maltese Falcon
  58. Manhattan (Maybe also Annie Hall?)
  59. The Matrix (first one only)
  60. Miller’s Crossing
  61. Modern Times
  62. Moonrise Kingdom
  63. Moulin Rouge (best.musical.ever.)
  64. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  65. Notorious
  66. Out of Sight (Sodherberg & Clooney=4evah)
  67. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
  68. The Philadelphia Story
  69. The Piano (female director; great leading performance; sob)
  70. Psycho
  71. Real Genius (80s comedy with a female director—bonus!)
  72. Rear Window
  73. Rebecca (1940)
  74. Rebel Without a Cause
  75. Return of the Jedi
  76. Reversal of Fortune
  77. Roger & Me
  78. Rope (it’s allll one shot!)
  79. The Royal  Tenenbaums
  80. Say Anything…
  81. Singing In the Rain
  82. Silence of the Lambs
  83. Spider-man (2002)
  84. Star Wars/Raiders/All those over-rated series go here. (That’s right: I said Star Wars AND Raiders are both over-rated.)
  85. Thelma & Louise
  86. The Thin Blue line
  87. Schindler’s List (maybe; I only saw it once and promised myself I’d never have to sit through it again)
  88. Sleeping Beauty (Best of the classic Disney animated films)
  89. Sunset Blvd.
  90. The Thin Man
  91. The Times of Harvey Milk
  92. Titanic
  93. To Kill a Mockingbird
  94. Trekkies (the first one)
  95. The Truman Show
  96. Unforgiven (representing all dark westerns—including The Searchers, etc.)
  97. Vertigo
  98. Wall-E (maybe Up should go here but I think the first half of Up is much stronger than the second).
  99. When Harry Met Sally
  100. When the Levees Broke

 

1 Comment on My Favorite Movies At This Moment in Time

  1. Pingback: Updates and Silliness…. An Extra | Tales from the Motherland

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