The List (Offered Without Apology, but with Some Explanation)

.

You know what's a stupid number? 100. Anything that's divisible by both 25 and 4, really, is sort of pointless. But beyond that, 100, like 10 before it, is an entirely arbitrary number at which to top out our lists of "best" and "favorite" things. This point, self evident though it should be, was really driven home for me when Glenn Kenny put together his Best of the Decade list. His list ran to seventy titles, and pretty much everybody seemed pretty cool with that, except one commenter named Mike who said "[t]he perceived value of a list of ten movies is much higher than a list of 50 or 70. 50 movies is boring. Add another 20 just for the sake of more content and it's like forcing a ninety minute film to run 2 and a half hours" and then demanded (really, he did) that Glenn "refine" his list down to ten.

.

Reading that comment, I thought "If 'best of' lists that aren't as lovingly rounded out to numbers that begin with '1' and end with '0' piss off dickweeds like Mike, then there must be something to be said for them." Therefore, my previously announced "100 Favorite Films" list has bulked up to something like 190. Frankly, I stopped counting. I decided it simply made no difference when my list ended, and if I reached a point where I was excising films from the list for no reason other than to hone it down to a preordained number, then the word "favorite" will have become less important than that arbitrary number. And that, my friends, is pure anarchy.

.

So this list is really fucking long. Sorry, but them's the breaks. I do feel pretty comfortable that this list, as it stands now, is as representative of what I consider my favorite films as it's possible for me to make it. In all honesty, some of these films I've only seen once, but they've hung in my memory better than some films I've seen half a dozen times. My definition of the word "favorite" is, I confess, a bit nebulous, and hard to explain, but I'm comfortable with it.

.

Okay, enough preamble. Here's the list:
__________________________________________

10 Rillington Place (d. Fleischer)

2001: A Space Odyssey (d. Kubrick)

7th Victim, The (d. Robson)

.
AI (d. Spielberg)

Air Force (d. Hawks)
Alien (d. Scott)

Amadeus (d. Foreman)

American Movie (d. Smith)

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (d. McKay)

Angel Face (d. Preminger)

Antichrist (d. Von Trier)
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The (d. Dominik)

.
Bang the Drum Slowly (d. Hancock)
Barry Lyndon (d. Kubrick)

Barton Fink (d. Coens)

Bedlam (d. Robson)

Big Night (d. Tucci/Scott)

Big Trouble in Little China (d. Carpenter)

Black Christmas (d. Clark)

Black Hawk Down (d. Scott)

Blade Runner (d. Scott)

Bloody Sunday (d. Greengrass)
Body Snatcher, The (d. Wise)

Bounty, The (d. Donaldson)

Brazil (d. Gilliam)
Breaker Morant (d. Beresford)

Bridge on the River Kwai (d. Lean)
Bridge, The (d. Steel)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (d. Peckinpah)

Broadway Danny Rose (d. Allen)

.

Chinatown (d. Polanski)

Christmas Story, A (d. Clark)

Commitments, The (d. Parker)

Conversation, The (d. Coppola)

Cool Hand Luke (d. Rosenberg)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (d. Allen)

Crucible, The (d. Hytner)

Crumb (d. Zwigoff)

Curse of the Demon, The (d. Tourneur)

.

Dawn of the Dead (d. Romero)

Days of Heaven (d. Malick)

Dead Man (d. Jarmusch)

Dead Man's Shoes (d. Meadows)

Dead Zone, The (d. Cronenberg)

Deliverance (d. Boorman)

Devil in a Blue Dress (d. Franklin)

Dodes ka' Den (d. Kurosawa)

Dog Day Afternoon (d. Lumet)

Dogville (d. Von Trier)

Don't Look Now (d. Roeg)

Double Indemnity (d. Wilder)

Down by Law (d. Jarmusch)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (d. Mamoulian)

.

Ed Wood (d. Burton)

Edmond (d. Stuart Gordon)

Eight Men Out (d. Sayles)

Election (d. Payne)

Elephant (d. Van Sant)

Elephant Man, The (d. Lynch)

Empire of the Sun (d. Spielberg)

Exorcist, The (d. Friedkin)

Exorcist III, The (d. Blatty)

.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (d. Morris)

Fly, The (d. Cronenberg)

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (d. Fischer)

Freaks (d. Browning)

Frenzy (d. Hitchcock)

Friends of Eddie Coyle, The (d. Yates)

.

Gimme Shelter (d. Maysles bros.)

Glengarry Glen Ross (d. Foley)

Godfather, The (d. Coppola)
Gone Baby Gone (d. Affleck)

Goodfellas (d. Scorsese)

Gosford Park (d. Altman)

Great Escape, The (d. Sturges)

Groundhog Day (d. Ramis)

.

Heat (d. Mann)

Heavenly Creatures (d. Jackson)

High and Low (d. Kurosawa)

Hombre (d. Ritt)

Homicide (d. Mamet)

Horror of Dracula (d. Fischer)

Hour of the Wolf (d. Bergman)

Hustler, The (d. Rossen)

.

Ice Harvest, The (d. Ramis)

In a Lonely Place (d. Ray)

Inglourious Basterds (d. Tarantino)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (d. Kaufman)

.

Jackie Brown (d. Tarantino)

Jaws (d. Spielberg)

.

Kill Bill (both) (d. Tarantino)

King of Comedy, The (d. Scorsese)

King of Kong, The (d. Seth Gordon)

.

Lady Eve, The (d. Sturges)

Last Detail, The (d. Ashby)

Last Night (d. McKellar)

Last of the Mohicans, The (d. Mann)

Le Cercle Rouge (d. Melville)

Let the Right One In (d. Alfredson)

Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The (d. Powell/Pressburger)

Life Aquatic, The (d. W. Anderson)

Little Shop of Horrors (d. Oz)

Long Good Friday, The (d. Mackenzie)

Lord of the Rings (d. Jackson)

.

Mad Love (d. Freund)

Magnolia (d. P. Anderson)

Maltese Falcon, The (d. Huston)

Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (d. Ford)

Manchurian Candidate, The (d. Frankenheimer)

Manhunter (d. Mann)

Martin (d. Romero)

Master and Commander (d. Weir)

Miami Blues (d. Armitage)
Mighty Wind, A (d. Guest)

Miller's Crossing (d. Coens)

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (d. Schrader)

Mist, The (d. Darabont)

Modern Romance (d. Brooks)

Mr. Death (d. Morris)

Mulholland Dr. (d. Lynch)

Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, The (d. Herzog)

.

Nashville (d. Altman)

Network (d. Lumet)

Night of the Hunter, The (d. Laughton)

Nights of Cabiria (d. Fellini)

Ninth Configuration, The (d. Blatty)

No Country for Old Men (d. Coens)

Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht (d. Herzog)

.

Office Space (d. Judge)

Once Upon a Time in the West (d. Leone)

One False Move (d. Franklin)

Out of the Past (d. Tourneur)

.

Panic in the Streets (d. Kazan)

Pan's Labyrinth (d. Del Toro)

Passion of Joan of Arc, The (d. Dreyer)

Phase IV (d. Bass)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (d. Weir)

Prestige, The (d. Nolan)
Prime Cut (d. Ritchie)

Psycho (d. Hitchcock)

Punch-Drunk Love (d. P. Anderson)

.

Rampage (d. Friedkin)

Real Life (d. Brooks)

Rear Window (d. Hitchcock)

Red Shoes, The (d. Powell/Pressburger)

Right Stuff, The (d. Kaufman)

Rio Bravo (d. Hawks)

Road Warrior, The (d. Miller)

Rome, Open City (d. Rossellini)

Rosemary's Baby (d. Polanski)

Rushmore (d. W. Anderson)

.

Sansho the Bailiff (d. Mizoguchi)

Serpent's Egg, The (d. Bergman)

Seven Samurai (d. Kurosawa)

Seventh Continent, The (d. Haneke)

Shaun of the Dead (d. Wright)

Shining, The (d. Kubrick)

Sideways (d. Payne)

Simple Plan, A (d. Raimi)
Some Came Running (d. Minnelli)

Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The (d. Ritt)

Steel Helmet, The (d. Fuller)

Straw Dogs (d. Peckinpah)

Sunset Boulevard (d. Wilder)

Sweeney Todd (d. Burton)

Sweet Hereafter, The (d. Egoyan)

Sweet Smell of Success, The (d. Mackendrick)

.

Taking of Pelham 123, The (d. Sargent)

Tall T, The (d. Boetticher)
Targets (d. Bogdonavich)

Team America: World Police (d. Parker)

Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The (d. Lang)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The (d. Hooper)

There Will Be Blood (d. P. Anderson)

Thing, The (d. Carpenter)

Thing from Another World, The (d. Hawks/Nyby)

Third Man, The (d. Reed)

This is Spinal Tap (d. Reiner)

Three Amigos (d. Landis)

Topsy Turvy (d. Leigh)
Tropical Malady (d. Weerasethakul)

True Grit (d. Hathaway)

.

Unbearable Lightness of Being, The (d. Kaufman)

Unbreakable (d. Shyamalan)

Unforgiven (d. Eastwood)

United 93 (d. Greengrass)

.

Vanishing, The (d. Sluizer)

Videodrome (d. Cronenberg)

.

Waiting for Guffman (d. Guest)

Whirlpool (d. Preminger)

White Heat (d. Walsh)

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (d. Fassbinder/Fengler)
Wicker Man, The (d. Hardy)

Witchfinder General (d. Reeves)

.

X - The Man with X-Ray Eyes (d. Corman)

.

Yakuza, The (d. Pollack)

.

Z Channel (d. Cassavetes)

Zodiac (d. Fincher)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please tell me how stupid my tastes are in the comments section.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: To anyone who cares, last night I was trying to remind myself why I didn't include There Will Be Blood, and I couldn't. So I've added it.