100 Favourite Films

This blog has been on a hiatus these past few months, I've been busy at work and any free time at home is spent running around after my 2 year old daughter. So for this first post back, I thought it might be a fun to publish something I was doodling with last year. Compiling your favourite-anythings is always a tricky business, but back in October I set myself a challenge one idle afternoon to compile my 100 all-time favorite films. Initially it seemed like a straight forward task – and the first 50 came quickly enough, but the second batch proved much more difficult - trying to keep the selection as honest as possible meant throwing out an awful lot of good stuff – case in point: Dead Ringers, one of Cronenberg’s finest pictures, couldn’t be considered because I haven't seen the film in 20 years. Upon completion the list was squirreled away to be dug up again at some later date for further contemplation, and now a few months later, looking at the list again, the experiment seems to have worked: when I dug out the list yesterday, I didn't feel like any revisions were necessary. A list of 100 films, but more than that, it represents 100 adventures, 100 seismic shocks, 100 fantastic memories from those formative film-watching years - it's being blindsided by Performance on Moviedrome on a Sunday night, it's seeing Weekend and realizing that French art cinema could be as psychotronic as any exploitation film, it's seeking out the music of Stockhausen after hearing it in the opening scene of Walkabout, it's discovering that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was as frightening as Horror films seemed to be when you were too young to see them...

Scanning down thru the titles, I can see the vast majority of films were discovered in the VHS era, which accounts for some glaring omissions – there’s almost no Eastern European cinema here, no Bavas, no Bergmans – the only explanation I can offer is that I came to appreciate these films much later in the DVD era. I’m disappointed also the list doesn’t reflect the amount of foreign language films I have in my wider collection, and apart from a Ford and a Hitchcock, there are no classic studio-era films to show off. Still, I’m happy there are a few we’re-not-worthy titles in there - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Drugstore Cowboy, The Hitcher, Rumble Fish, THX-1138 – films I will fiercely defend to the death. So without further ado, deep breath…


001 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
002 - Aguirre Wrath of God
003 - Alien
004 - Aliens
005 - All The Presidents Men
006 - Andrei Rublev
007 - Annie Hall
008 - Apocalypse Now
009 - Blade Runner (The Final Cut)
010 - Blue Velvet
011 - Boogie Nights
012 - Bram Stoker's Dracula
013 - Burning, The
014 - Cannibal Holocaust
015 - Carlito's Way
016 - Chelsea Girls, The
017 - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
018 - Clockwork Orange, A
019 - Dawn of the Dead
020 - Day of the Dead
021 - Deliverance
022 - Deranged
023 - Devils, The
024 - Dial M For Murder
025 - Do The Right Thing
026 - Drugstore Cowboy
027 - Easy Rider
028 - Eraserhead
029 - Exorcist, The
030 - Falls, The
031 - Fellini Sayricon
032 - First Blood
033 - Fog, The
034 - French Connection, The
035 - Frenzy
036 - Godfather, The
037 - Good, the Bad & the Ugly, The
038 - Goodfellas
039 - Heat (Michael Mann)
040 - Heaven's Gate
041 - Hitcher, The
042 - Inferno (Argento)
043 - I Walked With A Zombie
044 - Jaws
045 - Koyaanisqatsi
046 - Kwaidan
047 - Last Waltz, The
048 - Lethal Weapon
049 - Long Good Friday, The
050 - Macbeth (Polanski)
051 - Mad Max II: The Road Warrior
052 - Man Who Fell To Earth, The
053 - Manhattan
054 - Martin
055 - MASH
056 - Mirror
057 - My Darling Clementine
058 - Natural Born Killers
059 - Night of The Living Dead
060 - Nightmare On Elm Street, A
061 - No Direction Home
062 - Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
063 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
064 - Paris Texas
065 - Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid
066 - Performance
067 - Phenomena
068 - Psycho
069 - Pulp Fiction
070 - Ran
071 - Reservoir Dogs
072 - Rumble Fish
073 - Schindler’s List
074 - Seven Samurai
075 - Shoah
076 - Solaris
077 - Sorcerer
078 - Stalker
079 - Straw Dogs
080 - Suspiria
081 - Taxi Driver
082 - Tenebrae
083 - Terminator, The
084 - Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
085 - Thief
086 - Thin Red Line, The
087 - Thing, The
088 - THX 1138
089 - To Live And Die In LA
090 - Touch of Zen, A
091 - Traffic
092 - Two-Lane Blacktop
093 - Valerie & Her Week of Wonders
094 - Videodrome
095 - Walkabout
096 - Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard)
097 - When Harry Met Sally
098 - Wicker Man, The
099 - Wings of Desire
100 - Zombie Flesh Eaters