Twenty years ago, between my sophomore and junior years in high school, I put together my first list of one hundred favorite movies. At the time, the project felt overdue, as I’d considered myself interested in movies for a good long while before that. But in hindsight, I knew basically nothing and had seen even less. Looking over the list again, for probably the first time in a decade, I have a vague recognition of the choices, but the inescapable conclusion is that I wasn’t really interested in movies yet. The real effort was at least a couple years away. When I started keeping track of my progress via this blog (which started after I began paying attention to internet film culture and all the discoveries it offered), my pace accelerated sharply. To illustrate: in my “Class of 2017” post, I note that I had seen more than 2,500 films in total. I was twenty-nine years old. Seven years later, I’ve more than doubled than total. Today I’m more excited about the medium, and a vast array of movies that I still haven’t seen, than ever.
That 2017 edition of the list was also the first one to be unranked. I also noted at the time that ordering the hundreds of movies I considered favorites had become too ungainly a project. What I didn’t say was that the decisive moment happened when a film critic I admire commented on the placement of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the highest new entry in the 2016 edition, as my two-hundred-thirty-seventh favorite film of all time. It wasn’t his intention to make me feel silly, but I did nonetheless. Why continue to rank the movies if I was going to be so very hesitant to shake up even the top two hundred?! Almost half the movies I placed in my top 100 in 2016 were also on the 2004 list. As a character in a movie that would be released in December 2017 put it, it was time to let the past die. Now, of course, a twentieth anniversary would seem to be the perfect time to put out another ranked top 100, but I still don’t feel ready. (This indicates that I also still take the project, and “getting it right,” too seriously.) Maybe 2026 will be the time; I’ll just put that out there.
It was another productive year of watching several hundred movies I’d never seen before. The second half of 2023 saw me picking at a variety of things, discovering two or three new favorites from the likes of Hal Hartley, Radu Jude, Sam Peckinpah, and the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series. Then, 2024 chimed in with my big Irving Thalberg project, which added ten more movies to my list of favorites. One of the few things I haven’t kept meticulous track of over the years is how many movies I’ve revisited and decided I loved when I hadn’t before. Of the 107 movies named below (a new personal best), ten of them were movies I’d first seen more than a year ago, which is very likely the most for any of these annual updates. A smaller movie-watching project from last year, in which I revisited the films of Chaplin and Keaton, played a sizable role in this tidbit. It always feels good to discover new things to appreciate in movies I may have shrugged at before.
What’s next? I already have a fairly complicated and overstuffed viewing schedule planned for the summer. There are still plenty of films from some of my favorite directors that I haven’t seen, and I’ll be making some progress with them. After that, I have my sights set on another year that is currently getting an anniversary: 1994, one of my favorite movie years. By the time this year is over, I may or may not have something regarding 1994 out in the world, and at the very least I should have my definitive ranking of favorite movies from that year. One down, only about a hundred twenty-odd to go, and then I can get to work on the big list. Great googly moogly. For now, here are one hundred and seven more movies I think are pretty great. They are, as always, a pretty varied bunch. I have no idea what they, as a group, say about me. But there are two entries from franchises that were also represented on that original 2004 list, and there’s a part of me that thinks that’s kinda neat. The past lives on.
| Title | Director | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Centimeters per Second | Shinkai Makoto | 2007 |
| 35 Up | Michael Apted | 1991 |
| Against the Wall | John Frankenheimer | 1994 |
| Alice in Wonderland | Jonathan Miller | 1966 |
| Amy | Asif Kapadia | 2015 |
| Asteroid City | Wes Anderson | 2023 |
| Barbie | Greta Gerwig | 2023 |
| Beau Is Afraid | Ari Aster | 2023 |
| Beyond the Valley of the Dolls | Russ Meyer | 1970 |
| The Big City | Satyajit Ray | 1963 |
| The Big House | George W. Hill | 1930 |
| The Black Hole | Gary Nelson | 1979 |
| La Bohème | King Vidor | 1926 |
| The Boy and the Heron | Miyazaki Hayao | 2023 |
| Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia | Sam Peckinpah | 1974 |
| Brooklyn Bridge | Ken Burns | 1981 |
| Il buco | Michelangelo Frammartino | 2021 |
| Bullet Ballet | Tsukamoto Shinya | 1998 |
| The Cameraman | Buster Keaton & Edward Sedgwick | 1928 |
| Canal Zone | Frederick Wiseman | 1977 |
| Le capitaine Fracasse | Alberto Cavalcanti & Henry Wulschleger | 1929 |
| Children Who Chase Lost Voices | Shinkai Makoto | 2011 |
| The Color Wheel | Alex Ross Perry | 2011 |
| Creepshow | George A. Romero | 1982 |
| Dead of Night | Cavalcanti, Crichton, Hamer et al. | 1945 |
| The Depths | Hamaguchi Ryusuke | 2010 |
| Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World | Radu Jude | 2023 |
| Dog Star Man | Stan Brakhage | 1965 |
| Earwig | Lucile Hadžihalilović | 2021 |
| Edge of Eternity | Don Siegel | 1959 |
| The Empty Man | David Prior | 2020 |
| Enemy | Denis Villeneuve | 2013 |
| Eskimo | W.S. Van Dyke | 1933 |
| The Exorcist III | William Peter Blatty | 1990 |
| Faerie Tale Theatre: Rip Van Winkle | Francis Ford Coppola | 1987 |
| Fallen Leaves | Aki Kaurismäki | 2023 |
| Fay Grim | Hal Hartley | 2006 |
| A Film for Friends | Radu Jude | 2011 |
| Fly Away Home | Carroll Ballard | 1996 |
| Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices | Werner Herzog | 1995 |
| The Guardsman | Sidney Franklin | 1931 |
| Hallelujah | King Vidor | 1929 |
| The Happiest Girl in the World | Radu Jude | 2009 |
| Heavenly Creatures | Peter Jackson | 1994 |
| Henry Fool | Hal Hartley | 1997 |
| Heroes of the East | Lau Kar-leung | 1978 |
| The Holdovers | Alexander Payne | 2023 |
| I’m Dangerous Tonight | Tobe Hooper | 1990 |
| In Another Country | Hong Sang-soo | 2012 |
| Inside Out | Randel, Borden, Payne et al. | 1991 |
| Is This Fate? | Helga Reidemeister | 1979 |
| Jackass Number Two | Jeff Tremaine | 2006 |
| Jackass: The Movie | Jeff Tremaine | 2002 |
| John Wick: Chapter 4 | Chad Stahelski | 2023 |
| The Killer | David Fincher | 2023 |
| Kings Row | Sam Wood | 1942 |
| Licence to Kill | John Glen | 1989 |
| Lifeboat | Alfred Hitchcock | 1944 |
| Limelight | Charles Chaplin | 1952 |
| The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh | Wolfgang Reitherman & John Lounsbery | 1977 |
| Martial Club | Lau Kar-leung | 1981 |
| Master Gardener | Paul Schrader | 2022 |
| May December | Todd Haynes | 2023 |
| The Merry Widow | Ernst Lubitsch | 1934 |
| Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One | Christopher McQuarrie | 2023 |
| Ned Rifle | Hal Hartley | 2014 |
| No More Ladies | Edward H. Griffith | 1935 |
| Odds Against Tomorrow | Robert Wise | 1959 |
| Oliver Twist | David Lean | 1948 |
| Oppenheimer | Christopher Nolan | 2023 |
| The Passing | Bill Viola | 1991 |
| The Pearl of Death | Roy William Neill | 1944 |
| Perfect Blue | Kon Satoshi | 1997 |
| Priscilla | Sofia Coppola | 2023 |
| Rasputin and the Empress | Richard Boleslawski | 1932 |
| Red Angel | Masumura Yasuzô | 1966 |
| Renaissance | Beyoncé Knowles-Carter | 2023 |
| Return to Oz | Walter Murch | 1985 |
| Road House | Rowdy Herrington | 1989 |
| Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani | Karan Johar | 2023 |
| Rotting in the Sun | Sebastián Silva | 2023 |
| The Royal Hotel | Kitty Green | 2023 |
| Scarred Hearts | Radu Jude | 2016 |
| Seven Chances | Buster Keaton | 1925 |
| Sherlock Holmes Faces Death | Roy William Neill | 1943 |
| Shocker | Wes Craven | 1989 |
| The Skin Game | Alfred Hitchcock | 1931 |
| The Song of Songs | Rouben Mamoulian | 1933 |
| Songs from the Second Floor | Roy Andersson | 2000 |
| The Spider’s Stratagem | Bernardo Bertolucci | 1970 |
| Straw Dogs | Sam Peckinpah | 1971 |
| The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg | Ernst Lubitsch | 1927 |
| Synecdoche, New York | Charlie Kaufman | 2008 |
| Thirst | Park Chan-wook | 2009 |
| This Gun for Hire | Frank Tuttle | 1942 |
| This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse | José Mojica Marins | 1967 |
| Total Balalaika Show | Aki Kaurismäki | 1994 |
| Le Trou | Jacques Becker | 1960 |
| Two Mules for Sister Sara | Don Siegel | 1970 |
| The Unknown | Tod Browning | 1927 |
| Went the Day Well? | Alberto Cavalcanti | 1942 |
| Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? | Pedro Costa | 2001 |
| Why Worry? | Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor | 1923 |
| Win It All | Joe Swanberg | 2017 |
| Winnie the Pooh | Stephen Anderson & Don Hall | 2011 |
| A Woman of Paris | Charles Chaplin | 1923 |
| You Hurt My Feelings | Nicole Holofcener | 2023 |
And here, I think, is my top ten from among those 107:
| 10. Two Mules for Sister Sara |
| 9. Straw Dogs |
| 8. Perfect Blue |
| 7. Scarred Hearts |
| 6. Beau Is Afraid |
| 5. Henry Fool |
| 4. May December |
| 3. Went the Day Well? |
| 2. Le Trou |
| 1. Fallen Leaves |
Geppetto's Clocks 