My Favourite Films
This is a list of my personal most favourite films of all time. This list I believe comprises all the very greatest of my movie-watching experiences.
I've written comments for all of the films to try to explain what I like about them, to give the reader an idea about the films and why I'd recommend them, and to more effectively convey my tastes in general. And so of course comments and suggestions for films you think I'd like that I may not have seen are most welcome (but keep in mind obviously, this is my list, and there is no such thing as a film that "must" be included to "legitimize" the list, or any of that nonsense).
This list is in order of preference, but, you know, a lot of them are pretty interchangeable, and I change the order of all of them all the time, and I'd still be hard-pressed to explain why any one film has the edge over the film below it. What matters is: all of these films are amazing!
Most Recent Addition: Moonage Daydream (2022)
I've written comments for all of the films to try to explain what I like about them, to give the reader an idea about the films and why I'd recommend them, and to more effectively convey my tastes in general. And so of course comments and suggestions for films you think I'd like that I may not have seen are most welcome (but keep in mind obviously, this is my list, and there is no such thing as a film that "must" be included to "legitimize" the list, or any of that nonsense).
This list is in order of preference, but, you know, a lot of them are pretty interchangeable, and I change the order of all of them all the time, and I'd still be hard-pressed to explain why any one film has the edge over the film below it. What matters is: all of these films are amazing!
Most Recent Addition: Moonage Daydream (2022)
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- DirectorSion SonoStarsJoe OdagiriJai WestMotoki FukamiFaced by a society of criminals, these three youths avenge their rights.Now this is spirited cinema! This is a movie that grabbed me and shook me, that somehow (and however briefly), snapped me out of my submission to the "sleepy but restless", mundane flow of my life, and made me believe, dream, determine to one day find my own "paradise", my own place in this world where I may feel the same sense of camaraderie, the same ecstasy of existence, as the characters in the film. This is a film I haven't really stopped thinking about since I saw it – there are so many good parts, and Jai West's performance is off the charts – but it's Jō Odagiri's character, "the boy who only wanted to fly", that I really feel a deep connection with. Sion Sono has said he would like to see his movies "have the power to change people's lives for the better". I really think that power is in Hazard, for me.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsJosef BierbichlerStefan GüttlerClemens ScheitzThe foreman of a small village glassworks dies without revealing the secret to the famous "Ruby Glass".Werner Herzog is my favourite filmmaker, and though that was the case long before I saw Heart of Glass, I'm now convinced that Heart of Glass is his best work. This is a film for which Herzog actually had his actors perform under hypnosis, and the result is probably his strangest film. It's hilarious, but the laughs come out half-way between laughing and crying. The most random things in the film startle and scare me. By the end of it, I feel that I too have been hypnotized. There's nothing else quite like it. And as I find myself re-watching it, every few months, like a ritual, allowing the movie ever more to work its spell on me... there is no film so beautiful, or so oddly funny; its atmosphere is incomparable... I love every line, every frame... and I think... this is my favourite film of all time. Although I'm not sure I could watch it with anyone else in the room.
- DirectorMasaki KobayashiStarsTatsuya NakadaiMichiyo AratamaTamao NakamuraHis ideals challenged by life as a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist faces ever greater tests in his fight for survival.+ The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959)
+ The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
It is nearly ten hours long, yes, but it is the most powerful film I have ever seen. As Kaji, Tatsuya Nakadai – my favourite actor – delivers his finest performance. The amount of character development, and the degree to which you grow attached to his character over the film's duration is staggering, and makes Part III what it is: for 190 minutes, the most gripping piece of film I've ever watched. An unforgettable masterpiece, and a true anti-war film; for the message this movie delivers, and for the potency of its delivery, I would argue, this is the most important movie ever made. - DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsLeon LaiMichelle ReisTakeshi KaneshiroThis Hong Kong-set crime drama follows the lives of a hitman, hoping to get out of the business, and his elusive female partner.Wong Kar-Wai's most playful film, and damnit, his coolest; my personal favourite of his. Kar-Wai is the director of some of the most painfully romantic movies ever made, and though this one isn't so much a love story in any ordinary way... It's a movie I'm in love with. Romantically. I can cuddle up with it any day and, no matter how many times I've seen it before, still get lost in its dreamy beauty.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsTakashi ShimuraNobuo KanekoShin'ichi HimoriA bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.Ikiru is a movie that I just want to give a big hug. Takashi Shimura has to be the most loveable of Japanese actors (Chishū Ryū being a close second). Here he plays an old man so sweet it's almost unbearable. He's dying of cancer, but given that, this is not a tragic or otherwise miserable movie. If I have a tear in my eye throughout the majority of the film, it's not because the film is depressing, exactly, but sentimental in all of the most effective ways. This is surely one of the greatest films of all time.
- CreatorMark FrostDavid LynchStarsKyle MacLachlanSheryl LeeMichael HorsePicks up 25 years after the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town are stunned when their homecoming queen is murdered.I was reluctant to include this here as a movie, since it’s not really a movie but the third season of Twin Peaks, or else a “Limited Event Series”. I do include miniseries on this list (e.g. Fanny and Alexander), but at 18 hours, this is a little long even for that categorization. That said, "Twin Peaks: The Return" was directed entirely by David Lynch, over 140 days of principal photography, as if it were one enormous movie, and it’s a monumental achievement in filmmaking which SHOULD belong amongst my favourite films. The original Twin Peaks was already my favourite TV show, but The Return belongs in a league and category all its own. It is a sublime and mesmerizing mix of absurdist comedy and visionary audiovisual artistry, to rival my beloved Heart of Glass. It is also an enormous love letter to the characters and world of the original Twin Peaks. It is ALSO the most uncompromising commercial work I've ever seen, and should be a massive game-changer, not only for television, but entertainment as a whole. Part 8 alone could top this list; it is the most jaw-dropping and radical hour to ever hit the small screen - or the big one.
- DirectorFrank CapraStarsJames StewartDonna ReedLionel BarrymoreAn angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.A must-watch every Christmas. It's possibly the biggest tear-jerker on this whole list – the despair it portrays within the comfort of the Old Hollywood Motion Picture Production Code is astonishing. As George Bailey, James Stewart paints perhaps the greatest human portrait in all of American cinema. If the ending is almost too cheerful by comparison to the first two thirds of the film, hey, it's Christmas.
- DirectorSion SonoStarsTakahiro NishijimaHikari MitsushimaSakura AndôA bizarre love triangle forms between a young Catholic upskirt photographer, a misandric girl and a manipulative cultist.This is a movie about the absurdity of sex and religion, and... whatever the hell else this movie is about. So much. I can't explain; it’d be a disservice to the film – not to mention, a fool’s errand – to try to translate into words what all it means to me (and anyway it’ll no doubt mean different things to everyone who watches it). But it doesn't matter. This is one of the most entertaining movies I’ve ever watched... It’s audacious and wickedly funny, and then, alternately, in an unexpected way, it's really quite sweet. It switches between so many different moods, touches on so many different ideas, and hits so many different notes over its epic four-hour duration, but at the heart of it all is a rather awesome bildungsroman and love story – at once emotionally draining and uplifting. This is a movie to fall in love with.
- DirectorTakashi MiikeStarsKenji SawadaKeiko MatsuzakaShinji TakedaA family moves to the country to run a rustic mountain inn when, to their horror, the customers begin befalling sudden and unlikely fates.Holy crap this is the most wildly entertaining ...thing I've seen in my life! I hesitate to call it a movie, because there are limits to what one can imagine when one hears the word "movie". This thing exists well above and beyond those boundaries. Furthermore, saying it is only the most entertaining movie doesn't do it justice – it is the most entertaining of all things! I think I'm understating how entertaining this movie is. This movie very literally had me screaming in delight, uncontrollably, while I laughed throughout the majority of the film.
- DirectorRobert BiermanStarsNicolas CageMaria Conchita AlonsoJennifer BealsAfter an encounter with a neck-biter, a publishing executive thinks that he's turning into a vampire.HOLY CRAP, this is the funniest movie I've ever seen! Nicolas Cage is unbelievably amazing. I thought he was crazy in some of his other films, like Bad Lieutenant and Matchstick Men, but that was nothing. By comparison to Vampire's Kiss, his acting in those films was understated. THIS is Cage unhinged. It is INCREDIBLE. He plays a mentally ill publishing executive who, at work, is ludicrously abusive towards his secretary, and at home, erroneously believe he's turning into a vampire. I would say that about 95% of the time he was on-screen (or so), I was laughing. This movie had me literally rolling on the floor. Throughout. This film holds a 5.5 rating on IMDb, are you kidding me? I was expecting with this film to like Cage in the context of a bad movie. Instead, I immediately (from about the time when the bat flies in the window), recognized it as a brilliant parody of bad movies – like Nicolas Cage was playing like he was a bad actor in a bad movie, but exaggerated in such a self-conscious and pitch-perfect way that it doesn't itself become one of the bad movies it's parodying. But as the film goes on, it becomes so much more even than that! It's such a violently maniacal parody of the whole vampire craze that it's not only masterful as a spoof – it becomes easily the best thing to do with vampires at all that I've ever seen! THIS is a genuine masterpiece of comedy.
- DirectorSergio LeoneStarsClint EastwoodEli WallachLee Van CleefA bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.
- DirectorClint EastwoodStarsClint EastwoodGene HackmanMorgan FreemanRetired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner Ned Logan and a young man, The "Schofield Kid."I see "Unforgiven" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as being sort of two sides of the same coin. Both are pretty much perfect. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is like, the ultimate fun, stylish, energetic movie – perfectly scored and directed and filmed. And when you start watching "Unforgiven", you expect something similar. Clint Eastwood is now older, but he's playing basically the same character. William Munny, a retired gunslinger, refers to the exploits of his youth, and they're things we can easily imagine seeing Eastwood do in his old spaghetti westerns. But then we get to the first gunfight in "Unforgiven" and it's staggeringly opposite in tone to what we've come to expect. Completely unlike "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "Unforgiven" ends up being one of the most dark and beautiful films I've ever seen. Between the two of them is just about everything I love about movies.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsTatsuya NakadaiAkira TeraoJinpachi NezuIn Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.Ran is, from start to finish, flawless and amazing. Every time I watch it I appreciate it more. Nakadai is amazing as the elderly Lord Ichimonji. The second time I watched it I really appreciated how big of a part Lady Kaede played. The third time, I realized how important the scenes with Lady Sue and Tsurumaru are to the overall themes of the movie. And how much the fool Kyoami brought to the picture. I must admit I didn't get much out of just reading the Shakespeare play on which the story is based, but through this film I can certainly appreciate how it is one of the greatest stories ever told, and I can't imagine it being executed more perfectly than it is here. Ran is Kurosawa's masterpiece among an oeuvre of masterpieces.
- DirectorQuentin TarantinoStarsUma ThurmanDavid CarradineMichael MadsenThe Bride continues her quest of vengeance against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Budd, and the treacherous, one-eyed Elle.+ Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Kill Bill is one of the most fun movies ever made. It's such a wonderful potpourri of styles. I would even go so far as to say that there is not a single forgettable scene in all four hours of it. This is a film that I would watch, like, once a week for a while; that's how much I enjoyed it. I loved every line, every camera movement, every sound. It's bloody brilliant. - DirectorWerner HerzogStarsBruno S.Eva MattesClemens ScheitzIn Berlin, an alcoholic man, recently released from prison, joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin.The ending of this movie is one of the greatest ever filmed. I don't want to spoil it, but my jaw was dropped, and I was thinking "Oh my god. He's actually ending this with a d______ c______." If you've seen it then you know what I'm talking about. It's amazing. I would say that this film, better than any of his other films, captures Herzog's bleak worldview, as well as his absurdist sense of humour, and the juxtaposition of these two things, which I would contend is the primary trademark of almost all of his films.
- DirectorLee Hae-junStarsJeong Jae-yeongJung Ryeo-wonYeong-seo ParkA failed suicide attempt leads a heartbroken man to live a life in the wilderness.This movie begins as the most brilliant 'Cast Away' parody ever, but ends up so much more. An extremely beautiful, extremely heartfelt, and very very funny film about two lonely people, castaways in a sense, deserted in the middle of a city of millions.
- DirectorWim WendersStarsHarry Dean StantonNastassja KinskiDean StockwellTravis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family.This is one of the first 'arthouse' films I ever watched; I actually only saw it because a game developer I admired cited it as his favourite movie. It had to have been the most utterly beautiful and sad film I'd ever seen then, and I still consider it one of the greatest films I've ever watched now. Travis' final speech, surely the most heartrending speech of any movie ever, still gets me, every time.
- DirectorKenji MizoguchiStarsKinuyo TanakaYoshiaki HanayagiKyôko KagawaIn medieval Japan, a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.There is a small handful of movies from the black & white, pre-widescreen era, that are astonishingly beautiful in a way that I don't think can ever be replicated. Amongst them are It's a Wonderful Life, Ikiru, and The Grapes of Wrath. A mysterious beauty seems to permeate the very essences of these films, not only in the sadness these films convey, but in the eras they depict and even in the texture of the film itself. Though it isn't as well-known (and I didn't fully appreciate it on my first viewing), I see Sansho the Bailiff now as an unequivocal masterpiece, that belongs right alongside the aforementioned films – as one of the truly greatest films of all-time, and the most beautiful. The saddest of all jidaigeki films, it's a film that truly brings to life the harsh world of mediaeval Japan, "when Japan had not yet emerged from the dark ages, and mankind had yet to awaken as human beings".
- DirectorMasaki KobayashiStarsTatsuya NakadaiAkira IshihamaShima IwashitaWhen a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.I'm glad this film wasn't my introduction to the samurai genre. Some of the film's most impactful scenes require a loose understanding of the samurai Bushido code of honour. But gosh they're impactful! The film is over two hours long, and most of it takes place in a single room – an extended conversation – and yet the film somehow sustains an intensity all throughout, greater than just about any other film I can think of.
- DirectorJohn FordStarsHenry FondaJane DarwellJohn CarradineAn Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl, joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.I tend to find the over-the-top southern U.S. family mannerisms and vernacular in typical John Ford films awfully lame – like for example the scenes with the whole family in The Searchers. But here, in a film all about a whole southern U.S. family, it all takes on a sort of poetry. Though I am not American or religious, there is a part of me that thinks that "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?" by the 1920s gospel singer Washington Phillips is the most beautiful song ever made, that Huck Finn is the greatest book ever written. And for that part of me, this is my perfect movie. It stands beside It's a Wonderful Life as one of the most terribly affecting films of Hollywood's classical era. The image of the car, carrying the whole family and everything they have in the world, is one of the most unforgettable in cinema. And Jane Darwell's performance in particular is incredible.
- DirectorBong Joon HoStarsTilda SwintonPaul DanoAhn Seo-hyunA young girl risks everything to prevent a powerful, multinational company from kidnapping her best friend - a fascinating beast named Okja.My favourite genre is dark comedy, of which many films on this list are examples. But Okja illustrates my ideal of the genre perfectly. There is little more depressing to me than the animal agriculture industry, and there are documentaries out there you can watch, that will illustrate why. Alternatively, most people in their entertainment seek a kind of fantasy, where maybe the happy talking cartoon farm animals go on some wild adventures, but the viewer of course never comes close to having to consider the reality of factory farming. Part of what makes Okja so great, is that it is a wild fantasy film, but at the same time it doesn't sugarcoat the underlying reality. It's a film about the food industry, and it's honest about animal agriculture, and as such it gets very dark. But unlike a documentary, from within that darkness it creates something that manages to put a huge smile on my face throughout. That's good dark comedy: movies which don't attempt to skirt around the unpleasantness of reality, but dive right in, and at the same time make me laugh out loud. Okja is a delirious (and spot-on) satire, filled to the brim with colourful and crazy characters and performances (Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal are amazing). And it's one of the most refreshing, original, and funny films in years (or at least since Bong Joon-ho's own Snowpiercer). Some people have criticized Okja for pushing an anti-meat or vegan message, which I think is absurd. If depicting a slaughterhouse as a slaughterhouse makes you feel you're being moralized to, I think that says more about your own insecurity about your food choices, than it does about the film (a film whose director and main characters eat meat, and whose vegan characters – who I'll happily identify with – are completely ridiculous and impossible to take seriously!)
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsBertil GuvePernilla AllwinKristina AdolphsonTwo young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.This film – in particular the last half hour or so before the epilogue – has a dream-like, mesmerizing quality to it that no other film I've seen compares to. Strangely enough though, I would compare it to the last half hour before the epilogue of my favourite videogame – Killer7 – but I won't go too in depth into that for fear of sounding like a crazy person. I'll just say that it has something to do with the use of sound and colour in both of these sequences that somehow, indescribably, makes them profoundly effective. If the first half of this 5-hour (and I only recommend the 5-hour version) film feels a little slow the first time you watch it, stick with it; the pay-off is a thousand times worth it.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneTakashi ShimuraKeiko TsushimaFarmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him.This is a movie I just want to constantly be watching. I want to live in its world. By giving you time to get to know the characters and the places, the film makes its whole world come alive in a magical way like no other film – it truly transports you to another time and place that is believable and endearing (and full of memorable and loveable characters). And once you're there, it effortlessly captures both the fun, adventurous, even whimsical side of life in that era, as well as the scary and sad side.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsKlaus KinskiRuy GuerraHelena RojoIn the 16th century, the ruthless and insane Don Lope de Aguirre leads a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado.The stories behind the making of Aguirre are ridiculous, from the dangerous shoots from actual rafts on actual rapids in the middle of the jungle, to the exchanges of death threats between Herzog and lead actor Klaus Kinski (who would go on to make four more films together after this), to all the crazy stuff they had to go through to realize this film on their shoestring budget, in the jungle, hundreds of miles from the nearest city. The stories behind the making of sister film Fitzcarraldo are even more ridiculous, but Aguirre is the superior film. The film concerns a doomed expedition to find a treasure that does not exist and what's great about it is how the overall atmosphere of the film grows stranger and stranger as the unacknowledged futility of their mission drives the characters all slowly into madness. It gets to the point where Don Lope de Aguirre, talking to a monkey, is still harbouring delusions of grandeur while his dying crew barely even notice when they are once again being shot at by the jungle's natives. It's amazing and bleakly hilarious. That whole last ten minutes or so is flawless.
- DirectorHiroshi TeshigaharaStarsEiji OkadaKyôko KishidaKôji MitsuiAn entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.Kōbō Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes" feels like it should already be part of the popular consciousness – like it was required reading in high school or something – part of everyone's shared cultural iconographic understanding. But what a delight it is to discover it unexpectedly, a little later in life when I can fully appreciate it! Humans' ability to adapt – like an insect – in harsh environments, one's gradual acceptance of one's circumstances and comfort in a routine which stifles ambition... These ideas get under the skin, the setting seeps into the unconscious mind like sand – sand which I can never look at the same again! Teshigahara's film adaptation – in which Abe was directly involved – is faultless; it has to be the most successful realization of a seemingly unfilmable book ever made. That they managed to bring this location to life, and make it absolutely believable and real, is an astounding feat. With perfect cinematography, a perfect score by the legendary Tôru Takemitsu, and fantastic performances, this is one of the greatest films of all time. There is absolutely nothing like "The Woman in the Dunes". The novel or the film. And if you haven't yet – don't even read the premise. Just watch it. Or read it. Or both.