The Top 20: An Introduction

I have long been known as a lover of movies, and like anyone who has a particular interest in a medium, people have long been asking me what my favourite movies are. Like most who spend a great deal of time engaging with a particular art form I have bristled at locking myself into any one film above another. This question depends on so much. How does one define favourites, are these to be movies I respect the most? Movies I enjoy the most? Movies I am most entertained by? Movies I believe are important? My answers would also depend on my mood, what I've been watching most recently and what other critics I've been engaging with. Mostly these are all evasive techniques to keep myself from actually putting my tastes out there to be judged by others.

In talking with a friend recently, another movie lover, I came around a little on this stance against making a list. Picking a top ten is almost impossible, much like choosing which limb you would like to keep (movie lovers can be a melodramatic bunch). But a top twenty is more doable. Twenty gives room to allow many definitions on what makes a top movie. So I got to work and made a list:

(In no particular order)

1. Rio Bravo (1959)

2. Andrei Rublev (1966)

3. Star Wars (1977)

4. Crumb (1994)

5. Chinatown (1974)

6. Mullholland Dr. (2001)

7. Brazil (1985)

8. Videodrome (1983)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

11. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

12. The Dark Crystal (1982)

13. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

14. Apocalypse Now (1979)

15. No Country for Old Men (2007)

16. 8 1/2 (1963)

17. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

18. If.... (1968)

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

20. Zodiac (2007)

And there we go.

It must be said I am unhappy with this list. I have trouble believing there is no Allen, Bergman, Carpenter, Pekinpah, Hitchcock, Wells, Herzog, Leone, Jodorowsky or a dozen other amazing directors. At the same time I am confident this is a good representation of the many things I look for in film, what for me makes a great movie. There is much about each of these films that brought them to this list but there are two personal responses that carry through all of them, love and admiration. All these films have connected with me on a deep level at some point and each does something that I am slightly astonished by.

Blogging is easiest, and most interesting (hopefully), when there is a task. The (deeply arrogant) task I have given myself is to re-visit each of these films and write about them. Some I have not seen for years, others get a more or less constant rotation in my house. I will not give myself a strict timeline because I know that I will break it, but my goal is to do one a week for 20 weeks.

The critical project is a complicated one, and I will not pretend to fully engage with these texts. Unfortunately the majority of film criticism is concerned only with the visceral and emotional effects of a film. There is not enough effort put into treating films as art, how it interacts and impacts society, or it's relationships with it's own heritage, languages, traditions and cannon. I will attempt some of this but the truth is this list is a personal one and I will be coming to it as something personal. In this spirit I feel this work will be part appreciation, part criticism and all biography.

I will be watching these in the order listed above, which is no order at all but mearly the order I wrote them down. Feel free to play along if you wish. The first film up is Howard Hawks' 1959 western Rio Bravo where John Wayne shuts a man up by just staring him down.