In compiling this list of 101 Favorite Films –  and, yes, it’s 101, as there was one film I simply couldn’t justify  removing from this list – it’s important to note the distinction between  Great Films (or Essential Films) and Favorite Films. The Great Films  are required viewing, master classes from master filmmakers. For  example, among film critics and students of film, it’s of a general  consensus that Citizen  Kane is widely considered the  best film ever made, and it’s well deserving of its status; it’s the  kind of film every filmmaker should aspire to make. Yet I’m hard-pressed  to find among film critics a handful who’ll call Citizen Kane their favorite film. I’m sure there are a few,  but I haven’t seen any yet. 

Favorite  Films, on the other hand, should speak to the viewer on a much deeper,  more personal level. To me, a favorite film is one that you never  hesitate in viewing repeatedly, or it’s a film that brings back a  memory, good or bad, that memory placing you in an exact moment in your  past. A favorite film should be endlessly quotable. Ideally, a favorite  film is own you own in your DVD library. 

In no way should anyone misconstrue this list  as being a Greatest Film Ever list. Far from it. As far as I’m  concerned, it’s far easier to defend a favorite film that it would be to  call it a great film. In this list, you’ll no doubt see some films  listed that’ll make you question my sanity. Yes, Plan 9 From Outer Space makes my all-time favorite cut, and you’ll see  why. No, The  Bicycle Thief does not make my cu. Begin writing your hate mail now. 

This was a list I narrowed down from a  preliminary list of 216 films, not to mention the thousands of films  I’ve seen as long as I’ve been a film viewer; among the films that  missed the cut (but that shouldn’t mean they’re not favorites  nonetheless) were Chinatown, Shaft, The Cranes are Flying, Spirit of the Beehive,  Some Like it Hot, Night of the Hunter, Klute, Blowup, National Lampoon’s  Animal House (sigh), Let the Right One In, The  Hurt Locker, Audition, In the Mood for Love, and Almost Famous,  just to name a few. 

Finally, I’d  like to give credit where credit is due: this list was primarily  inspired by another blogger named John Williams, who blogs at A Special Way of  Being Afraid. It’s his list of 100 favorite films, (an eclectic list  if there ever was one!) that inspired me to compile my very own list. 

Okay, enough of my ramblings…so, without  further ado…

 101. Good Night and  Good Luck – Wearing its’ liberal  heart on its sleeve, Good Night and Good Luck  examines the fear and complacency the media fostered during the  McCarthyism of the 1950s. Set against the then-backdrop of the  mainstream media walking lock and step with the Bush Administration’s  “war on terror”, director George Clooney reminds us that it’s the  media’s responsibility to question the newsmakers, and not act as their  mouthpiece. The parallels between the Red Scare and the so-called War on  Terror are easy to draw, yet the film never beats you over the head  with its politics. In fact, it’s the seeming lack of politics, shot in  moody and tense B&W, that allows Good Night and Good Luck to succeed more as a serious drama than  political melodrama. David Straithairn’s performance as the esteemed  journalist Edward R. Murrow, the man that singlehandedly took on  McCarthy when other media outlets were too terrified to do so, is  monumental and magnificent. Sadly, this film seemed to have gotten lost  in the Awards shuffle between Crash and Brokeback Mountain, and its fallen-between-the-cracks status is  undeserved. This is a rich look at a shameful event in recent American  history, made all the more compelling by how relevant it still is today.

100.   Used Cars  – There are films that aspire towards a serious, muted look at things,  and there are films that aspire to just be plain dumb and funny. Used Cars is the latter. These are  the facts: selling cars is a funny business, complete with  larger-than-life personalities that want nothing more than to get you  out of their car lot in the car (or lemon) of your dreams. Used Cars  captures that notion perfectly. Basically, it’s a Good Guys vs. Bad Guys  story, with a fast-talking charmer named Roy Russo (Kurt Russell)  pitted between a long-simmering feud between two car-selling brothers  (both played by Jack Warden) whose used car dealerships exist across the  street from each other. There’s nothing subtle about the way each car  dealership make every attempt to lure customers, from an X-rated disco  revue to an interruption of the President’s address – obviously, that  feed goes hilariously awry, but business suddenly skyrockets. Used Cars  is gloriously goofy, stupid without being insulting, and a bucketload of  fun. 

99.   Videodrome –  David Cronenberg is my favorite freak-out director. His films always  explore the depths of human madness, the levels to which human beings  will plunge themselves towards base wants and desire. While his two most  recent films, A History of Violence  and Eastern Promises, serve as  slight departures from this M.O., they’re still vintage Cronenberg. Videodrome remains my favorite  Cronenberg film, a masterful psychological freak-out in which a TV  producer named Max Renn (appropriately made to life by James Woods – I  mean, who else could play Max Renn?) inadvertently discovers a  mysterious feed called Videodrome, complete with sadomasochism and  ritual murders; its’ Renn’s overnight obsession with Videodrome that  wreaks havoc into his life, and suddenly the line between fantasy and  reality becomes extremely blurred. Is Max imagining Videodrome, or is it  all too real? No matter. Long live the flesh.

98.   The Last  Detail – Two Navy Shore Patrol officers are assigned the task of  transporting a ne’er do well recruit to the naval prison at Portsmouth,  NH. The recruit’s crime: attempting to steal $40 from the CO’s wife’s  charity box. The SPs realize they have a week to transport the recruit,  so why not live it up? And they do so with aplomb, wit, a ton of booze  and a shit-ton of “fuck you”s and “cocksuckers” and, one of the best  lines in the film, “I am the motherfucking shore patrol, you redneck  motherfucker!” In those few days before the half-wit recruit’s about to  spend 5 years in the clink, they give the poor sap the time of his life,  even though it’s a futile gesture. While not necessarily a great film,  the combination of Jack Nicholson as a salty, chip-on-his-shoulder Navy  Shore Patrol officer, Robert Towne’s sharp, profanity-filled script, and  Hal Ashby’s assured direction makes The  Last Detail a favorite  film of mine. 

97.   Horror Express  – Filmed entirely in Spain, how the producers and director managed to  lure Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing AND Telly Savalas into this film,  all the while staying under a budget of $350,000 says more about the  triumph of imagination and necessity, and not so much about great film  making. Make no mistake, Horror  Express is a cheesy horror flick – basically, Lee and Cushing are  responsible for transporting what they believe to be the Missing Link  on a train across Siberia, when the Missing Link suddenly goes on a  murderous rampage – but it does provide genuine scares. Horror Express is, in some ways, an  homage to the Hammer Films that  Lee and Cushing helped make famous, and while Savalas as a Cossack  (seriously!) is a bit hard to swallow – and somehow we’re supposed to  believe that the Missing Link knows how to pick a lock? – it’s always  entertaining, and the film always reminds me of Chiller Theater on WPIX  Channel 11, every Saturday night; Horror  Express was a frequent feature of Chiller Theater, one that I  always looked forward to watching.

96.   Alphaville –  Seriously, this film is unbelievably weird. Esoteric, deliberately  obscure and relentlessly vague… yet so incredibly cool. I mean, this is  Jean-Luc Godard we’re talking here. He makes a sci-fi film that so  brazenly feels unlike a sci-fi film; Godard also tries to make a  detective story that feels unlike any detective story; guess what, it  works. What more can you expect? Godard loved taking chances and playing  around with preconceived notions. Alphaville isn’t Godard’s best film,  but it’s the one that’s stuck to me more than Breathless or Week-End.  Plus, when your film's hero is played with craggy-faced stoicism by  Eddie Constantine (as one of cinema's greatest-named heroes, Lemmy  Caution) and woos the luscious femme fatale Anna Karina in the process,  you know you're in for that rare mix of style AND substance. Seeing Alphaville, you can see where a film  like Blade Runner got its  aesthetic beauty from. 

95.   On Her  Majesty’s Secret Service – Most known as George Lazenby’s only  appearance as James Bond – he replaced the man that originated the role  to fame, Sean Connery – film critic Leonard Maltin was correct in his  assessment that had Connery stuck around and played 007 in this film, On  Her Majesty’s Secret Service could very well have been the best entry  in the entire series. In my opinion, this is one of the 5 best entries  in the series, one that eschews the gadgetry and improbable stunt work  in lieu of a tightly-paced, well-scripted action thriller that pits Bond  against his arch-nemesis Blofeld in a plot to unleash a biochemical  weapon, while Bond romances – and falls in love with – a suicidal  contessa that proves to be just as much his match. It’s unfair to  dismiss Lazenby as Bond; after all, he was plucked from obscurity to  play 007, and imagine this: replacing Connery as Bond would have been  akin to being the unfortunate sap to (hypothetically) replace Mick  Jagger in the Stones. Still, Lazenby handles himself, physically, with  the greatest of ease, and while his acting is at times a bit wooden, he  handled that final scene delicately and believably. Unfortunately,  Lazenby shot himself in the foot and fancied himself a serious actor,  announcing, before filming was even completed, that he wouldn’t do  another Bond film; OHMSS also  tanked at the box office, which led the producers to beg Connery to  return for one more film, the limp and insipid Diamonds are Forever, paving the way for a more cavalier  Bond to be played by Roger Moore. One wonders where the series would  have headed had Lazenby put more thought into his career and stayed on  as James Bond. 

94.   MASH – Filmed  under a shoe-string budget, with the California hills serving as a  substitute for Korea, all while the film’s cast and crew were ready to  revolt against director Robert Altman for what seemed to be a disastrous  film, MASH instead turned into  a scathing and often hilarious satire of war, with Korea serving as the  subtext against the Vietnam War. One can view MASH and dismiss it as a series of vignettes where hip  surgeons Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould) and Hawkeye Pierce  (Donald Sutherland) bang a bunch of nurses, drink martinis from a  homemade still, and generally flick a middle finger at Army brass, but  underneath the hip bravado lays a moral outrage the two surgeons often  display. They’re surgeons thrust into the field of battle, patching up  and desperate to save the lives of soldiers caught in the machine of  war, and their methods, though crude and often questionable, are their  only mechanisms to cope through the banality and futility of war. MASH also exhibits many of Altman’s  directorial tendencies – camera work that’s never intrusive, long shots,  and a display of conversational method towards dialogue that became  Altman’s trademark.

93.  The Hospital – It’s always good to  revisit a film that seems just as relevant today as it did some 40 years  before. The Hospital is a  dark, no, truly dark comedy set in a teaching hospital in Manhattan  where, if the gruesome incompetence of the staff doesn’t kill you, the  bureaucratic red tape most certainly will. As the Chief of Medicine who  oversees the operating staff, Dr. Herb Bock (a volcanic George C. Scott,  red-hot off his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the biopic of  the same name) is in the midst of a midlife crisis; his wife has left  him, his children won’t speak to him, his teaching hospital is falling  apart, and now he’s contemplating suicide. A series of deaths occur at  the hospital that point to gross incompetence, but Dr. Bock, along with a  patient’s daughter, Barbara Drummond (a somewhat miscast but always  welcome Diana Rigg) suspect murder may be afoot. The Hospital was written by Paddy  Chayefsky, rife with satire and great monologues posing as rants –  “We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived...  and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!”  Chayefsky would later aim his poisonous pen at television with the  brilliant script for Network.  40 years later, with health care reform on everyone’s mind and the utter  pointlessness of bureaucracy in our hospitals, the dripping hostility  and outright satire that is The  Hospital is still relevant today, and still funny. 

92. Team America: World Police – A crack, elite counter-terrorist squad? Check. Shit blowing up? Check. Kim Jong-il? Check? Bleeding-heart Hollywood A-listers taking one in the chin and elsewhere? Check. Sex, violence and mayhem. Check. All the characters portrayed by puppets? Uh..what? Really, this film shouldn’t work at all, but when you’ve got Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the brilliant masterminds behind South Park aiming their brand of profane satire at hawkish neoconservatives, dovish ultra-liberals, North Korea’s paranoid dictator, Islamofascism, Michael Moore, Broadway shows, and America’s status as an international policeman make for a crass and relentless funny satire. And it’s made even funnier by the decision to use marionettes and build sets big enough for puppets; the crazy bet pays off in assloads of funny. But to speak of Team America: World Police is to speak of perhaps the greatest pro-America song ever written since that night Francis Scott Key penned the Star-Spangled Banner…go on, sing it with me…America! FUCK YEAH!!!

91. Run Lola Run – A story told in real-time (i.e., the events taking place as we speak) is a time-honored tradition in cinema; a film like Cleo From 5 to 7 pretty much perfected that concept. But a film like Run Lola Run takes that real-time plot device and tweaks it to pulse-pounding effect: Lola’s story, in which she has 20 minutes to save her boyfriend from an error (he’s lost thousands of dollars that belongs to a drug dealer, and he has but 20 minutes to recoup that money) that will lead to him being murdered, is told 3 different times, each time with a different perspective, option, and ending. Each story presents a different option, a divergent choice or path Lola must take to help her boyfriend recoup that money. Told in a breakneck, frenetic pace, mixing special effects and animation, Run Lola Run’s primary weapon is the performance of Franka Potente as Lola, with her shock of copper-red hair, tattoos and ankle-high combat boots, Potente wears Lola’s frantic desperation in every action, gesture or word she makes, and we’re compelled to take that ride with her, not knowing where or how it will all end. The beauty of Run Lola Run is that it’s compact and never predictable, with each story bringing a unique and exhilarating perspective on the real-time narrative; Run Lola Run is never boring, yet for all its’ MTV-style flash editing, its’ a film that’s exceptionally well-crafted, understanding that all the fancy camerawork and quick edits can’t compensate for a taut, riveting story and an overwhelming, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-the-screen performance from Franke Potente.