Drew from California asked:Have you made your Top/Favorite MOVIES (so far in your life) list? If so, I’d love to get some good recommendations, as I feel rather “movie-watching deficient” in my lifetime. I do like Rom-Coms and intelligent conversations. Good adventure and sometimes good suspense are also fun to watch.
I find this extraordinarily difficult. For instance, I really liked EEAAO (Everything Everywhere All at Once). But will it stand up to the test of time? I dunno. I remember liking ALTERED STATES (1980) and Z, but they have faded from memory.
Likewise, I was a fan of Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim) (1962), a French film I saw in Binghamton in the late 1960s in a museum theater. It was my favorite foreign film, but I saw a lot of movies, such as Wild Strawberries, that I do not remember well.
That said, I tend to remember and enjoy movies I see in the cinema more than the ones I’ve seen on TV. Seeing a movie again is almost always revelatory. For instance, seeing The Wizard of Oz in 2022 on the big screen was way better than watching it several times on TV.
I like from coms. Is Groundhog Day a rom-com? You could try Love Actually. I like lots of documentaries, but only one of them made this list.
Here’s a list; THE list may never exist.
Casablanca (1942) – saw outdoors at a screening in the late 1970s near Rochester, NY. A great film
Gaslight (1944), which I wrote about, and the word, here.
Rear Window (1954) – I saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in the 1980s. Most excellent and full of suspense.
12 Angry Men (1957) – I wrote about it here
Always on the list
West Side Story (1961) –Some of my favorite music is here. It’s not a great movie – it takes too long to get going, but it was the first grown-up movie I saw.
101 Dalmatians (1961). Possibly the first movie I ever saw in a theater. The lead male adult, Roger, gets to sing “Cruella DeVille.”
The Sound of Music (1965) —My mother had the soundtrack on LP, but I never saw it until the 21st century. It is far better than I expected.
Le Roi de cœur (King of Hearts – 1966) – it played approximately annually at a movie theater in New Paltz, where I went to college.
The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968)- there is a story here.
Cabaret (1972) – I saw it when it first came out, then a half-century later, both in theaters. It holds up.
Young Frankenstein (1974) – Possibly the funniest movie I ever saw. I had an aisle seat, and I laughed so hard at one point that I was literally rolling in the aisle.
Annie Hall (1977) – I haven’t seen it this century, but I wrote about it in 2007 here.
Being There (1979) – I spent a lot of time defending this film from people who thought it was “boring” and that “nothing happens.”
Airplane! (1980) – It has a character named Roger, played by Kareen Addul-Jabbar. Oh, and other stuff, including the script based on an existing dramatic film.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)? Well, of course. This was a remarkable technological feat and features a character named Roger.
Baseball
Field of Dreams (1989): I opted for this Kevin Costner baseball film rather than the fine Bull Durham (1988) because it’s sappier, and I totally buy into it.
Do the Right Thing (1989) – probably the first Spike Lee movie I saw.
Groundhog Day (1993) was one of the first items I owned on VHS. It features JEOPARDY! to see annually.
THE IRON GIANT (1999) – I LOVE THIS animated MOVIE
Being John Malkovich (1999) – surreal
Chicago (2002). An old-fashioned musical
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is one of the few movies I have seen at home on the list.
The Incredibles (2004): My favorite Pixar film, which I can tell, because it was later on NBC, with all those damn commercials, and I still enjoyed it.
INSIDE OUT (2015) – an emotionally honest film
13th (2016). Documentary about the 13TH Amendment
Hidden Figures (2016) – I wrote about it here
Black Panther (2018) – I wrote about it here
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) – I mention this here
I am frequently reminded of a line from the 1991 film Grand Canyon, in which the Steve Martin character says: “That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” I’m convinced there is some truth to that.