This elite group is not necessarily just a collection of my "A" graded films. There is a difference between "Greatest" and "Favourite". While Citizen Kane, Bonnie & Clyde and Pulp Fiction are undeniable masterpieces, I rarely choose to play them again. Instead, my Movie Jukebox holds a bizarre range of titles, mixing classics with schmaltz, and the boringly expected with the downright questionable. All have one thing in common: I love them and instinctively know which one is required viewing at a specific time. Don't ask me how or why; emotional self-autopsy is tedious. I am only a fella.
The lengthy list below will be altered and updated regularly, adding new discoveries or re-evaluated old ones, as my movie viewing experiences continue to expand. So, please peruse my choices and feel free to gasp or chortle at my idiosyncrasies. Hopefully, it will encourage you to think about, and share, your own.
The Bat Whispers (West)
1931
Frankenstein (Whale)
Night Nurse (Wellman)
1932
Island of Lost Souls (Kenton)
Shanghai Express (von Sternberg)
1933
Baby Face (Green)
Dinner at Eight (Cukor)Duck Soup (McCarey)
The Invisible Man (Whale)
Little Women (Cukor)
Wild Boys of the Road (Wellman)
1934
It Happened One Night (Capra)
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (Ludwig)
1935
David Copperfield (Cukor)
The Good Fairy (Wyler)
If You Could Only Cook (Seiter)
Mad Love (Freund)Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd)
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
1936
After the Thin Man (Van Dyke)
Dodsworth (Wyler)
Libeled Lady (Conway)
Mr Deeds Goes to Town (Capra)
My Man Godfrey (La Cava)
1937
Angel (Lubitsch)
Captains Courageous (Fleming)
Daughter of Shanghai (Florey)Dead End (Wyler)
Stage Door (La Cava)
1938
The Citadel (Vidor)
Holiday (Cukor)
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock)
Test Pilot (Fleming)
Three Comrades (Borzage)
1939
Bachelor Mother (Kanin)
Destry Rides Again (Marshall)The Hound of the Baskervilles (Franklin)
Of Mice and Men (Milestone)
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks)
Stanley and Livingstone (King)
Young Mr Lincoln (Ford)
1940
The Letter (Wyler)
The Long Voyage Home (Ford)
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard)
Rebecca (Hitchcock)
Remember the Night (Leisen)The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch)
They Drive By Night (Walsh)
Torrid Zone (Keighley)
Waterloo Bridge (LeRoy)
1941
High Sierra (Walsh)
The Lady Eve (Sturges)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
1942
Casablanca (Curtiz)
For Me and My Gal (Berkeley)
The Pied Piper (Pichel)Saboteur (Hitchcock)
1943
The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman)
1944
On Approval (Brook)
The Suspect (Siodmak)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (LeRoy)
This Happy Breed (Lean)
1945
Confidential Agent (Shumlin)
The Enchanted Cottage (Cromwell)A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Kazan)
1946
Anna & the King of Siam (Cromwell)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
It's a Wonderful Life (Capra)
Sister Kenny (Nichols)
1947
Driftwood (Dwan)
The Ghost & Mrs Muir (Mankiewicz)
Nightmare Alley (Goulding)
1948Key Largo (Huston)
Rope (Hitchcock)
Scott of the Antarctic (Frend)
They Live By Night (Ray)
1949
Down to the Sea in Ships (Hathaway)
The Heiress (Wyler)
Intruder in the Dust (Brown)
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius)
The Secret Garden (Wilcox)
The Third Man (Reed)
White Heat (Walsh)1950
All About Eve (Mankiewicz)
The Breaking Point (Curtiz)
Kim (Saville)
Last Holiday (Cass)
The Wooden Horse (Lee)
1951
The Browning Version (Asquith)
Hollywood Story (Castle)
Outcast of the Islands (Reed)
The Tall Target (Mann)The Thing (Nyby)
1952
The Importance of Being Earnest (Asquith)
Singin' in the Rain (Donen; Kelly)
1953
Genevieve (Cornelius)
Houdini (Marshall)
The Kidnappers (Leacock)
Stalag 17 (Wilder)
The Titfield Thunderbolt (Crichton)
1954Hobson's Choice (Lean)
The Maggie (Mackendrick)
Rear Window (Hitchcock)
A Star is Born (Cukor)
1955
Bad Day at Black Rock (Sturges)
The Dam Busters (Anderson)
Shack Out on 101 (Dein)
1956
Anastasia (Litvak)
Lust for Life (Minnelli)
A Town Like Alice (Lee)1957
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean)
The Enemy Below (Powell)
Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (Huston)
Raintree County (Dmytryk)
The Shiralee (Norman)
12 Angry Men (Lumet)
The Wings of Eagles (Ford)
Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder)
1958
A Night to Remember (Baker)Separate Tables (Mann)
1959
Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger)
Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Levin)
North By Northwest (Hitchcock)
The Nun's Story (Zinnemann)
Rio Bravo (Hawks)
Warlock (Dmytryk)
1960
Pollyanna (Swift)
The Sundowners (Zinnemann)
Sunrise at Campobello (Donehue)Village of the Damned (Rilla)
1961
The Great Impostor (Mulligan)
The Guns of Navarone (Thompson)
Murder, She Said (Pollock)
Whistle Down the Wind (Forbes)
1962
Birdman of Alcatraz (Frankenheimer)
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich)1963
The Birds (Hitchcock)
Jason and the Argonauts (Chaffey)
1964
A Hard Day's Night (Lester)
Father Goose (Nelson)
King & Country (Losey)
Murder Most Foul (Pollock)
The Train (Frankenheimer)
1965
The Flight of the Phoenix (Aldrich)The Hill (Lumet)
36 Hours (Seaton)
1966
1967
The Dirty Dozen (Aldrich)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Kramer)
In the Heat of the Night (Jewison)
1968
The Anniversary (Baker)
Bullitt (Yates)
1969Oh! What a Lovely War (Attenborough)
1970
Patton (Schaffner)
Too Late the Hero (Aldrich)
1971
The Last Valley (Clavell)
1972
Cabaret (Fosse)
The Godfather (Coppola)
Tomorrow (Anthony)
1973
The Day of the Jackal (Zinnemann)Paper Moon (Bogdanovich)
Scarecrow (Schatzberg)
1974
Chinatown (Polanski)
Murder on the Orient Express (Lumet)
Young Frankenstein (Brooks)
1975
Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet)
Farewell, My Lovely (Richards)
Jaws (Spielberg)
Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Jones; Gilliam)1976
All the President's Men (Pakula)
1977
Julia (Zinnemann)
1978
The Fury (De Palma)
1979
1980
Breaker Morant (Beresford)
1981
Blow Out (De Palma)
1982Blade Runner (Scott)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer)
Tootsie (Pollack)
The Verdict (Lumet)
1983
The Dead Zone (Cronenberg)
Zelig (Allen)
1984
The Buddy System (Jordan)
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (Spielberg)Moscow on the Hudson (Mazursky)
The Terminator (Cameron)
1985
Turtle Diary (Irvin)
1986
Aliens (Cameron)
The Name of the Rose (Annaud)
Salvador (Stone)
1987
84 Charing Cross Road (Jones)
1988
The Accidental Tourist (Kasdan)Dead Ringers (Cronenberg)
Punchline (Seltzer)
1989
1990
Mountains of the Moon (Rafelson)
1991
Class Action (Apted)
Frankie & Johnny (Marshall)
JFK (Stone)
1992
Batman Returns (Burton)Leaving Normal (Zwick)
Unforgiven (Eastwood)
1993
Dave (Reitman)
Groundhog Day (Ramis)
The Remains of the Day (Ivory)
1994
Guarding Tess (Wilson)
1995
The American President (Reiner)
Copycat (Amiel)Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (Fleder)
1996
Fargo (Coen)
Manny & Lo (Krueger)
Phenomenon (Turteltaub)
1997
Dante's Peak (Donaldson)
The Rainmaker (Coppola)
1998
1999
The Bone Collector (Noyce)Magnolia (Anderson)
The Straight Story (Lynch)
Topsy-Turvy (Leigh)
2000
Wonder Boys (Hanson)
2001
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg)
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (de Heer)
2002
Ripley's Game (Cavani)
2003
American Splendor (Berman; Pulcini)Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir)
The Station Agent (McCarthy)
2004
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Anderson)
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Spider-Man 2 (Raimi)
2005
Cinderella Man (Howard)
Everything is Illuminated (Schreiber)
2006
The Illusionist (Burger)
The Prestige (Nolan)
Stranger Than Fiction (Forster)
2007
Juno (Reitman)
Lars and the Real Girl (Gillespie)
2008
Iron Man (Favreau)
2009
Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)
Watchmen (Snyder)
2010Let Me In (Reeves)
2011
Hanna (Wright)
Hugo (Scorsese)
This Must Be the Place (Sorrentino)
2012
The Avengers (Whedon)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Chbosky)
2013
Her (Jonze)
Parkland (Landesman)
2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson)
The Imitation Game (Tyldum)
Predestination (Spierig)
2015
Eye in the Sky (Hood)
Mr Holmes (Condon)
2016
Paterson (Jarmusch)
2017
Logan (Mangold)
Lucky (Lynch)
2018
2019
2020
