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With Valentine’s Day coming up very soon, I thought I’d give a special gift to movies- a love note, as it were, to some of my favorites. Here are 100 movies that I love- the kinds of movies that I can watch again and again. These are the films that blow me away with their genius. Or they’re the films that make me laugh every time. They’re the movies that have turned me into a movie nerd. These are 100 movies that I love, presented only in alphabetical order. In fairness, I love countless movies- hundreds and hundreds more than 100. So consider this my attempt at (for the most part) keeping it a little light-hearted and staying mostly away from the heavier drama. Beyond that, there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason here.
1. After Hours
2. American Psycho
The convergence of Dexter Morgan and Gordon Gecko. Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?
3. Animal House
4. Back to the Future
5. Bananas
6. Being There
This is the ending, so… spoiler alert and all that. At any rate, Hal Ashby’s nod to Voltaire’s Candide was a tiny bit of brilliant.
7. Blazing Saddles
8. Borat
9. Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
10. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
11. Caddyshack
12. Clerks
13. Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession (Yes. Seriously)
14. Cool Hand Luke
15. Daisies
16. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
17. Dead Alive
If you don’t like this, then you don’t like puppies or ice cream or the laughter of children.
18. Die Hard
19. Dogma
20. Eight Men Out
21. Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask)
This scene slays me.
22. Fargo
23. Field of Dreams
24. Firemen’s Ball
25. Flesh and the Fiends
26. Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein
27. Freaks (1932)
28. Ghostbusters
29. Glen or Glenda
30. Goodfellas
"The paw?"... "The foot, the..."... "The hoof"
31. Hard Rock Zombies
32. High Noon
33. High Plains Drifter
34. Hot Fuzz
This is one of my favorite sequences in any movie, ever- from this point until the end of the film. When I saw it in the theater, I laughed until I cried and then I laughed some more. Here’s the 20 second segment that kicks it all off, in grand spaghetti western style.
35. I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka
36. Idiocracy
37. Inglorious Basterds
38. Key Largo
39. Le Corbeau
40. Little Caesar (1931)
41. Louie Bluie
42. M
43. M. Hulot’s Holiday
44. Major League
45. Modern Times
46. Mon Oncle
47. National Lampoon’s Vacation
I could recite this film line for line. I think this type of irreverent chicanery is how I want people to “honor” me when I go out like Aunt Edna:
48. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
49. Pépé le Moko
50. Poltergeist
51. Psycho
52. Pulp Fiction
53. Raiders of the Lost Ark
I’m quite sure that this scene (and a handful of others from the same film) is why I’m terrified of snakes as an adult.
54. Rear Window
55. Rushmore
56. Seven Chances
57. Shaun of the Dead
58. Silent Movie
Mel Brooks is a comedic genius. He’s one of a very small handful of people that could pull something like this off- silent humor four and a half decades after silent films went out of style.
59. Simon of the Desert
60. Star Wars: A New Hope
61. Strangers on a Train
62. Sunset Boulevard
63. Super Troopers
64. The Big Lebowski
65. The Changeling (1980)
This is how you build suspense in a ghost story.
66. The Dark Knight
67. The Dirty Dozen
68. The Empire Strikes Back
69. The Exterminating Angel
70. The Fire Within
71. The Godfather (Part I & II)
72. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
It took me precisely 15 seconds to fall in love with this movie. Here are those 15 seconds (and then some).
73. The Groove Tube
One of the best comedies you’ve probably never heard of.
74. The Host
75. The Magician
76. The Night of the Iguana
77. The Phantom of Liberty
78. The Public Enemy (1931)
79. The Royal Tenenbaums
80. The Seventh Seal
81. The Silence of the Lambs
82. The Sixth Sense
83. The Straight Story
This is the kind of film that’s impossible to dislike. If someone told me that they hated this movie, I’d feel sad for that person.
84. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
85. The Thing
86. The Third Man
87. The Wicker Man (1973)
Between Christopher Lee, the gorgeous Britt Ekland, and a classic plot,The Wicker Man stands (pun intended) as a horror classic and a film with far-reaching influence.
88. The Wild Bunch
89. The Wolf Man
90. There Will be Blood
91. Trees Lounge
A highly underrated bit of 90’s indie cinema, Tree’s Lounge starred several future Sopranos cast members and had quite an influence on the show.
92. Un Chien Andalou
93. Unforgiven
I get goosebumps just thinking about the finale.
94. Up
95. Vertigo
96. Wall-E
97. Winter Light
98. Yojimbo
99. Zebraman
100. Zombie Lake
I love this movie the way little kids fall in love with the puppy with a missing leg.
thedroidyourelookingfor.wordpress.com 
will you be doing another of your ‘100 things I like about … movies’ soon?
You know, I hadn’t thought about it too much. But you’re right- I really should.
Great list, as I agree with at least 70% of it. I hope the Psycho you are referring to is the 1960 original. But you are probably like me and deny the existance of the remake.
And I finally got my boyfriend to see Borat for the first time last month, after much persuasion. We ended up watching it three times in a row because he was laughing so hard, he missed a lot during the first two times.
The re-make?!?! *shivers down my spine* That could almost be a “Don’t Watch It, John!” selection.
I wanted to include a Borat clip soooo much but I couldn’t find a good resolution version on Youtube. Ideally, it would’ve been the ice cream bear or the disgustingly hilarious hairy naked fight scene at the convention.
Sorry about that, people- I inadvertently “liked” my own blog entry. I’m not so full of myself as to do that on purpose.
Ahah, I did that once too and frantically tried to find a way to ‘unlike’ it but couldn’t find one.
I LOVE this entry so you get a thumbs up from me!
I bet you could do a few of your own 100 lists, Ruth.
Well I just might do that sometime, thanks for the idea, John! I was going to ‘steal’ for a V-day edition but I already have something else in mind.
Ahah I sometime find myself doing the same thing on Facebook 😉
Great list! Looks like I’ve seen exactly 50 of them. Sadly, I’ve been falling behind rapidly with the current crop of releases.
The toughest part of the list? Seeing each movie after I was done and thinking “I really ought to re-watch that one. And that one. And that one. And…”
21 of these movies are also on my Top 100 picks, which I plan to post to my blog soon. I admire your tastes, as usual, though the presence of “Up” surprised me.
Sometimes I like including stuff like ‘Up’ just to show diversity- that as much as I love Criterion films and heavy foreign stuff and horror and arthouse… there’s still room for dessert like ‘Up’ and ‘Wall-E’.
Though I should probably clarify that this isn’t really my 100 favorite. There’s a lot of overlap, without a doubt. I haven’t been gutsy enough to do a Top 100 yet just because there are sooooo many films that I’d feel bad for excluding. I’ve been wrestling with the idea of a Top 20 as a starting place because my top 20 are pretty firm for now.