Month: April 2014

I get asked about my favorite movies less often than you might think, so when the question does come up I’ve been in the habit of shrugging it off with a simple, “There’s too many to choose from.” Recently however I was inspired to give the question a proper go and I came up not with a single favorite (because there’s too many to choose from), but with this impressionistic list of movies I would watch at the slightest encouragement no matter how recently I’d seen it, which strikes me as the closest category to “favorite movie” that I can actually answer. Undoubtedly this list is incomplete, and possibly there are films here that I will take off the list some day, but without further ado, and in no particular order (indeed, in a deliberately randomized order) here they are:

Benji; The Matrix; The Incredibles; Die Hard; Zero Effect; Singin’ in the Rain; Memento; Jaws; Risky Business; Silverado; Casablanca; Safety Not Guaranteed; Repo Man; Waitress; The Karate Kid (1984); Being John Malkovich; The Parallax View; Body Heat; Tangled; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); The Natural; The Guns of Navarone; A Hard Day’s Night; Apollo 13; Field of Dreams; My Favorite Year; To Live and Die in L.A.; Pulp Fiction; Koyaanisqatsi; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Roman Holiday; Groundhog Day; Broadway Danny Rose; The Great Train Robbery (1979); Brick; The Rocketeer; It’s a Wonderful Life; The Sting; Mary Poppins; Ocean’s Eleven (2001); 1776; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Shakespeare In Love; The Silence of the Lambs; Get Shorty; Time After Time; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl; Goldfinger; Jacob’s Ladder; The Game; The Iron Giant; Hopscotch; North by Northwest; The Godfather; The Goodbye Girl; Pocketful of Miracles; Secretary; Amadeus; Swingers; Airplane!; Sleepless In Seattle; Trading Places; Animal House; The Brothers Bloom; What’s Up Doc?; Crimson Tide; Aliens; Bedazzled (1968); After Hours; Fight Club; Silver Linings Playbook; Almost Famous; Enchanted; The Shawshank Redemption

A handful of movies, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, are in their own special pantheon. And then there’s Star Wars. My relationship to Star Wars is… complicated.