
Here’s a fun experiment: Think of your 75 favorite films. Now rank them from most-loved to… Well… Loved but-not-loved-enough to be #1.
The list below are my 75 favorites. I would’ve listed a hundred but that would’ve been too easy. I had to make some serious decisions here, cutting some films that I really loved to narrow the list down.
Over time I’ll be discussing each of these films in a linked article, so watch my regular blog for updates. By writing about them, my goal is to understand exactly what it is that I love about these films.
Also, this list is bound to change with new additions and deletions. Some of my selections are obvious, others pretty surprising, even to me.
(Updated 11/04/2006)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Annie Hall
- The Shawshank Redemption
- The Seven Samurai
- Manhattan
- The Shining
- Rushmore
- Spirited Away
- Citizen Kane
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
- The Godfather
- Se7en
- American Beauty
- Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds
- Heat
- Being John Malkovich
- The Big Lebowski
- Silence of the Lambs
- Taxi Driver
- Goodfellas
- Drunken Master 2
- Ghostbusters
- Enter the Dragon
- 12 Angry Men
- Gandhi
- Pulp Fiction
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
- Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Star Wars: A New Hope
- The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
- The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Aliens
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Hard Boiled
- The Matrix
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Saving Private Ryan
- Fight Club
- Edward Scissorhands
- Glory
- Toy Story
Kiki’s Delivery Service
- Good Will Hunting
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Fargo
- The Magnificent Seven
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- Manos, the Hands of Fate
- Reservoir Dogs
- Boogie Nights
- Hotel Rwanda
- Election
- Batman (1989)
- Pleasantville
- Raging Bull
- Unforgiven
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Donnie Darko
- Barton Fink
- Mean Girls
- King Kong (1933)
- Lilo and Stitch
- Schindler’s List
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Goonies
- Full Metal Jacket
- Poltergeist
- Blade Runner
- The Last Emperor
- The Royal Tennenbaums
- Repo Man
- Cinema Paradisio
- Pee Wee’s Big Adventure



