I recently had the idea of listing my favorite movies. My original list comprised 26 entries. I then added four movies to make a list 30 items long.

You might imagine that I first chose my favorite movie, them my next favorite movie, my third most favorite movie, and so forth. Movies, however, are not easily ranked on a comprehensive, one-dimensional goodness scale. I like 2001: A Space Odyssey for reasons different from those behind my fondness for Doctor Zhivago. I like some movies not simply for their intrinsic qualities but also for my personal history with them. These insights allowed me to construct my movie list without guilt; I don’t have to decide if My Fair Lady is better or worse than High Noon.

My list is not definitive. If I were to make a new list tomorrow, it might be different, though some entries—Casablanca comes to mind—would be the same. Memory and mood affect what titles I put down. That said, today’s list is the following:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

• The African Queen

• Carol

• Casablanca

• The China Syndrome

• Chocolat

• Day for Night

• Doctor Zhivago

• Fantasia

• Gone with the Wind

• High Noon

• Jaws

• Julie and Julia

• Lawrence of Arabia

• Melancholia

• My Fair Lady

• Norma Rae

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

• Romeo and Juliet (1968)

• The Shining

• Smiles of a Summer Night

• Sunset Boulevard

• The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

• To Kill a Mockingbird

• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

• Vertigo

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?

• The Wizard of Oz

• Woman in the Dunes

• The Young Girls of Rochefort

I did not generate the above list off the top of my head in alphabetical order. Alphabetizing the titles makes it easy to find particular items, however.

Having created a movie list, I thought it would be interesting to share the list with friends. Even more interesting would be comparing my list to lists created by others. I could, perhaps, discover cinema companions, friends with tastes in movies similar to my own.

My list is admittedly idiosyncratic. Finding someone with an identical list, perhaps even a substantially similar list, would be a Twilight-Zone experience. But the number of matches would provide some indication of common interests in cinema. If anyone fails to recognize the movie titles on my list or has seen none of the movies, that person is not likely a movie buff, and we had best discuss other topics.

A Challenge

Make your own list of favorite movies. Make the list as long or as short as feels right. (There is nothing special about 30.) Compare it to lists of friends. Can you identify your movie companions? Can you find friends with whom you need to discuss something besides movies?

— LED, 5/11/2025

 
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