Favourite films of all time – an attempt at making a list

After reading Steve’s and Kelly’s post on Roger Ebert’s top-10 greatest movies of all time, I decided to make a top-10 list, because I thought it will be fun. Writing down a list should be easy – it would start with the first movie and end with the tenth. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. So, you have to endure with me, during this long introduction at the beginning and a long apology at the end. I am sorry for that.

 

I wasn’t sure whether I can separate the meanings of ‘favourite’ and ‘greatest’. It was too hard. It was difficult to leave out favourites in the pursuit of ‘greatness’. So, I will call my list ‘My top-10 favourites’. However, I decided to not include romantic comedies, action movies, thrillers, horror movies, spy movies, animation movies and the like. I love all these genres (I can watch ‘The Transformers’ and ‘The Transporter’ any number of times), but I thought that I will include only ‘arty’ kind of movies. (Now please don’t pounce on me and tell me that there are ‘arty’ romance movies and ‘arty’ action movies and kill me 🙂) I also decided to include only American, European and Japanese movies on this list. I would have loved to include Indian movies but then I decided to make a separate list of favourite Indian movies. I also ignored Oscar nominees of recent years – selectively, of course.

 

So, subject to the above caveats, here is my top-10 alltime favourite movies, in no particular order.

 

(1) Hamlet – This film version of Shakespeare’s play is faithful to the original. Laurence Olivier as the tortured Prince of Denmark is peerless. The last scene where Horatio says – “Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” – still makes me cry.

 

(2) Casablanca – I had to include a Humphrey Bogart and an Ingrid Bergman movie – two of my favourite movie stars – and which one better than the one in which both of them had acted together. One of the great love stories of all time. It still makes me happy and sad.

 

(3) Burnt by the Sun – Set in Russia during the time of the purges brought out by Stalin, this tells the story of a retired army officer who is living the happy Russian life in his village with his young wife and children when the boyhood sweetheart of his wife arrives on the scene. But appearances are deceptive and this man is not what he seems. This movie showed me that things can change in an instant and then we will spend the rest of our life or whatever is left of it, yearning for the past. I am a big fan of Nikita Mikhalkov who has acted in and directed this movie. I love all his movies but I think this is his best. It won the Jury prize in Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film – both in 1994.

 

(4) A Special Day – It is a movie set during World War 2 Italy. Hitler has come to Italy and Mussolini is welcoming him with a parade. Everyone in a particular apartment complex has left to see the parade except for the building caretaker. And two people. One of them is a housewife who has work at home. Another is a mysterious man who is packing stuff in his house. When the two meet accidentally, something happens. Sophia Loren is brilliant as the housewife – I didn’t know that she was such a brilliant actress. Hollywood has totally wasted her talent casting her in sexy-siren roles. Marcelo Mastroianni as the mysterious man is wonderful too.

 

(5) Rashomon – A man is travelling with his wife through a forest and he gets killed. Who is the murderer and why was he killed? The court assembles witnesses who each tell a different story. Which is the truth? Is there something called the absolute truth? The movie asks these interesting questions. I have seen this Akira Kurosawa movie many times and it is wonderful each time. One of my dear friends who has probably watched all the best movies ever made, told me that Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ is better than ‘Rashomon’. I can’t see how Kurosawa could have improved on ‘Rashomon’. I want to watch ‘Ikiru’ now and find out.

 

(6) Wild Strawberries – A retired professor goes on a long trip by car with his daughter-in-law to get a honorary degree. During the trip he meets many people who remind him of his own past life. He takes a trip down memory lane. This interplay of what happens during the current time and the professor’s trip down memory line form the rest of the story. I haven’t seen many of Ingmar Bergman’s movies, but this is my favourite out of the ones I have seen.

 

(7) Things We Lost in the Fire – Shows the relationship between a young, widowed mother and her husband’s closest friend who is a drug addict. For some reason I have never warmed up to Benicio Del Torro before but loved his performance here. Halle Berry as the young widowed mother has done brilliantly. This movie also taught me a new phrase ‘God’s Kiss’. 

 

(8) 12 Angry Men – How a juror convinces the rest of the jury of the innocence of the accused is the story.  I have mostly seen Henry Fonda as a villain, most memorably in ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’. So it was interesting to see him as a juror in this movie. Fonda is brilliant in that role. I fell in love with director Sidney Lumet after seeing this movie.

 

(9) Pulp Fiction – I love all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. But this one – the most studied and analysed movie of his – has to take the cake. It was a close race between this and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ though. Samuel Jackson is brilliant in this movie. Uma Thurman played her perfect role to date. And Tarantino shows that violence can be art.

 

(10) The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – I had to include a Clint Eastwood movie 🙂 ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ is one of my top two favourite westerns, the other being ‘Django‘. Coincidentally, both of them spaghetti westerns. Film critics and connoisseurs of westerns might look down on spaghetti westerns (westerns made by Italians and non-Americans), but Sergio Leone showed that the imitation could be better than the original. When people tell me that John Wayne was the greatest hero of westerns, I ask them – ‘Have you watched Clint Eastwood?’ J

 

Some of the movies that I really wanted to include, but had to leave out were ‘Juno’ (a movie I love watching again and again. It is about teen pregnancy), ‘The Reader’ (I really wanted Kate Winslet on the list), ‘Heaven Can Wait’ (which has one of my favourite golden-era actresses Gene Tierney), ‘The Little Foxes’ (starring another of my favourite actresses Bette Davis who plays the role of an awesome villain in the movie), ‘The Petrified Forest’ (in which I loved all the characters including the charismatic robber played by Humphrey Bogart), ‘The Piano’ (Jane Campion is a genius), ‘The Godfather’ (It used to be one of my favourite movies but for some reason the power of the movie has waned in recent times.), ‘Before Sunrise’ (I really felt bad at leaving this one out), ‘Crimson Tide’ (the conversation on Lippizaner horses by Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington was enough for me), ‘The Band’s Visit’ (beautiful movie about Egyptian musicians who travel to Israel for a concert and lose their way there and end up in the middle of nowhere and have some pleasantly surprising experiences as a result), ‘Stromboli’ (I had included one Ingrid Bergman movie and so had to leave this out), ‘Irony of Fate’ (probably my most favourite Russian movie. Unfortunately it is a romantic comedy and because this was an ‘arty’ movie list, it was pipped by the artistic credentials of ‘Burnt by the Sun’), two Clint Eastwood movies ‘Gran Torino’ and ‘A Perfect World’ (there was room only for one Clint Eastwood movie), ‘An Unfinished Piece on the Mechanical Piano’ (a movie based on a Chekhov play called ‘Platonov’. The long unwieldy title hides behind it a beautiful work of art. Unfortunately, there was room for only one Russian movie), ‘The Weakness of the Bolshevik’ (a Spanish movie which tells an achingly beautiful story of love between a bank executive and a teenage girl), ‘Dr.No’ (the first Bond movie might be viewed as just an entertainment vehicle. But the first scene where Bond is introduced is one of the best character introductions I have seen. It gives me goose pimples even now! Sean Connery is so masculine and handsome –  it is no wonder that he is frequently voted as the sexiest man alive! The film nearly excelled itself on this aspect with the introduction scene of Ursula Andress as Honey Rider. The Bond introduction was better though, in my opinion), ‘Amelie’ (a beautiful, funny French love story which made me fall in love with Audrey Tautou), ‘No Man’s Land’ (a film based on the Bosnian war which I really loved and for which I should really have found room in my list) and ‘The Curse of the Golden Flower’ (directed by my favourite Chinese director Zhang Yimou, it is a grand movie with sweeping sets and depicts palace intrigue during the Tang dynasty).

 

There are no movies by Stanley Kubrick (one of my alltime favourite directors – I really wish I had found room for ‘Paths of Glory’ on my list), Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese on my list, which is really disappointing.

 

 If I try making a top-10 list tomorrow, I am sure I will have a different set of movies on that list!  It is so hard to make just one top-10 list! I think I should make separate lists for American, European, Indian, Asian and ROTW movies.

 

What do you think of my list? Which are your alltime favourite top-10 movies?

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