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.
Definitely agree with you on Airplane!, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Iron Giant. I see no silent films on your list, so I would recommend you check out Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush”, “City Lights” and “The Kid”, Keaton’s “The General” and “Sherlock Jr.”, Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” and the latest restored version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.”
I did this as an early COVID-era project . . . https://jericsmith.com/2020/03/18/movie-buff-my-50-favorite-films/
Of course, if I did it today, it would look different. Maybe a five-year update in early 2025 . . .