"Favorite" would be far too weak a word for the way I feel about these movies. "Favorite" is something you might say about your "favorite color," but it's not a term you'd use about your friends or family. And, to be quite honest (maybe a little embarrassingly so), that's the way I think about these movies.

I love them. Even though they haven't always loved me back. Some have introduced me to the harshest truths of life -- maybe when I was young enough that I would have been happier not knowing. (Ignorance IS bliss!  If you're capable of refusing knowledge.) Chinatown, for example, showed me (among many other things) the idea that, by trying to protect somebody, you could actually wind up making sure they got hurt. I was 16 -- I didn't exactly want to know that. And that terrible possibility was as chilling and shocking to me as the final, fatal, flaw in Mrs. Mulwray's iris. A big, dark crack opened up in the heretofore relatively solid (I thought) ground beneath my feat.  The abyss yawned.

My parents, poor things, didn't understand why I was so devastated. They told me to stop subjecting myself to things like that. But, really, deep down, I did want to know, after all -- even if, in the long run, it made existence significantly harder to bear. At the time, I wanted to be prepared for the life that lay ahead of me (and hadn't yet learned that you can't actually prepare). Likewise, it was extremely painful to realize that, as Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) says in Under the Volcano, "There are some things you can't apologize for."

More even than friends, these movies are, in some key ways, also my mentors. They did, in fact, teach me quite a lot about how to live my life -- and, above all, they helped me figure out what was most important in life, what I values I prized most, and how to approach the mysteries of the human heart with awe, and understanding, and joy. My god, I'm beginning to sound French. Or just naive. Or both.

So, call me corny, call me simplistic, but I really was determined to emulate Johnny Case (Cary Grant) in George Cukor and Phillip Barry's Holiday (1938) and beware of soul-numbing, dead-end promises of big money. (Just in case I were ever to receive any.) I've always tried (usually successfully) to choose independence and creative latitude over a fat paycheck -- mainly because I learned -- from Holiday and from early, post-college experience -- that money just wasn't enough to make me happy or keep me motivated. (For that, I require pharmaceuticals... but that's another story.)

Speaking of chemicals: I've read that science doesn't really know if depression is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, or if depression causes a chemical imbalance in the brain. Chicken/egg. Well, I don't know if I love some of these movies because they reflected my intuitive vision of the world, or if it's because they shaped or defined that vision for me. Probably some of both. These movies are "home" for me: They were familiar the first time I saw them; they showed me what I probably already knew to be True. It was kind of like love at first sight (even thought I didn't love 'em all the first time I saw 'em -- some great artistic experiences, like great relationships, can require work).   And speaking of love at first sight:

When I saw Buster Keaton for the first time, I knew I was in the presence of a great clown, a great filmmaker, and a great artist -- I saw a great philosopher. (See The Beauty of Buster for an appreciation and vintage photo gallery.) Now, Keaton didn't think of his work that way; it certainly wasn't something he was consciously trying to "say." But, watching him, I learned about perseverance and making an effort to trust the hostile/indifferent forces of the universe -- and about integrity.

I've been a working film critic, in some capacity, on and off, for about 20 years now, and people have often asked me what I think makes the difference between a good film and a lousy, or at least not-so-good, one. It's taken me some time to realize that the key for me is that one word: integrity. A great movie doesn't settle for tricking the viewer; it respects the viewer. One way this is expressed in Keaton is in the way he films his stunts. He knows he could get laughs much easier with a little editorial sleight-of-hand. But (as a person, as a filmmaker, as a comedian) he had integrity. He wanted not just to provoke a guffaw, but to delight and astonish -- so, again and again, he films his most amazing physical stunts in one long take (most famously in the incredible -- but entirely credible! -- falling housefront gag from Steamboat Bill, Jr.).

Not that a filmmaker has to risk his or her life in the name of integrity, the way Buster did. Integrity is expressed in every frame of a great movie -- in its themes, its compositions, its music, its performances... in the way everything works together (even when, in a provocative masterpiece like Do the Right Thing, the wind blows across an American flag (Nashville); or the way the camera waltzes along with the dancers, in a long, fluid movement around the floor, at the last of the great Amberson balls (The Magnificent Ambersons); or the way that ripples spread over the surface of water (Sansho Dayu); or the way Aunt Fanny's (Agnes Moorehead) voice cracks as she collapses against a water heater and cries, "It's not hot!" (again, from Ambersons). As Roger Ebert says (and I paraphrase, badly), movies aren't about the stories they tell; they're about how they tell the stories they tell. (For negative examples of movies that betray themselves, and their audiences, with a lack of integrity, see my section called The Big Lie.)

So, about this here list again: Why 120 titles? Because I started the CinePad shortly after I became (much to my astonishment) 40, and 120 is 3 x 40. So there. How's that for logic?

Because vision and sensibility are what I respond to most strongly, I'm sure I could make a 100 Most Beloved Films list simply by choosing four films apiece from the following directors:

*OK, I know they're not directors, but they're auteurs nevertheless.
See Jeeem's Pantheon for a similar list of directors in a proper setting.

 
Or, I could just do it the way I'm gonna do it, and try to keep from loading up on too many pictures from each of these Masters. There are some major directors whose work isn't on my list, like Kurosawa and Chaplin (although I honestly don't think the latter is a much of a filmmaker). I admire -- even love -- some of their pictures, but (so far, at least) there's always something missing for (or in) me; I don't feel that deep, personal connection to them that I feel to others. (Oddly, I'm finding it difficult to pick a single title that would make my list by, say, Sternberg or Godard, although their body of work means so much to me; on the other hand, I feel that Chabrol deserves a place in my pantheon if only for Le Boucher alone....)

Every movie on this list still elicits some kind of physical/emotional response from me every time I think of it, or even just see/hear the title -- an ache, a yearning, goosebumps, a rising swell of elation -- even if I haven't re-watched the movie in several years. So, I'm not going to apologize for having a few "official" classics on my list. (Besides, there are some things you can't apologize for.) I have never seen a more thrilling, entertaining movie than Citizen Kane -- it's alive, it's positively vital to my continued existence on this planet, and no amount of institutional acclaim is going to kill it off and make it a museum piece, as far as I'm concerned. Same goes for Rules of the Game, The Searchers, Vertigo... and so on.)

Finally, back to "beloved": I admit, my passion for some of these movies may have something to do with my age (or the age), or the circumstances of my life when I first encountered and fell in love with them. But by using the word "beloved" I want to convey that these movies on my list still speak most deeply to me; that I was moved in some extraordinary way by each of them, and that they continue to move me; that my cherished response to them is not purely emotional or aesthetic or intellectual or visceral, but some ineffable combination of All Of The Above; and that I have watched and re-watched them over the years and our relationship has never grown cold or stale. I think of these movies as pictures of the inside of my head. We know that a mere word, like "Rosebud," could never sum up a man's life. But if I had to choose some ribbons of images to represent mine, I'd choose these:

Top o' the list! (right column)

I'll show you mine if you show me yours:
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The Top Twenty

 
More
(in alphabetical order)

28 Up
8 1/2
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Animal Crackers
Annie Hall
Another Woman
Avanti!
Badlands
Barton Fink
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Bimbo's Initiation
The Bitter Tears of
  Petra von Kant
Boogie Nights
Le Boucher
The Brood
Carrie
Close Encounters of
  the Third Kind
Contract
The Crying Game
Cutter's Way
Days of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Deep End
The Dekalog
Do the Right Thing
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Amuck
Ed Wood
E.T. -- The
  Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Living
Eraserhead
Excalibur
French Can-Can
The Godfather (Part II)
Hail the Conquering Hero
Hannah and Her Sisters
Happiness
Heaven Can Wait
High Hopes
Holiday
Housekeeping
I Know Where I'm Going
I Was Born, But...
In a Lonely Place
It's A Gift
Lancelot du Lac
Laura
The Life and Death of
  Colonel Blimp
The Long Goodbye
The Manchurian Candidate
Manhattan
Miracle of
  Morgan's Creek
Monty Python's
  Life of Brian
My Own Private Idaho
Naked Lunch
New York, New York
Night of the Hunter
Nightmare on Elm Street
North By Northwest
Obscure Object of Desire
Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in the West
Paris, Texas
Pat Garrett and
  Billy the Kid
Perceval
Pinocchio
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Proof
Psycho
Rear Window
Repulsion
Rio Bravo
The Road Warrior
Rules of the Game
The Scarlet Empress
The Searchers
Secrets & Lies
The Shining
The Singing Detective
Stop Making Sense
Stranger Than Paradise
Summer
Sunset Boulevard
Swing Time
Taxi Driver
This Is Spinal Tap
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
Twin Peaks
(feature and first season)
Ugetsu Monogatari
Un Chien Andalou
Under the Volcano
Vincent
Ways in the Night
Weekend
The Wild Bunch
The Wind
Winter Kills
The Woman in
  the Window
A Year of the Quiet Sun 

(... and a few spots left blank for future recollection & reconsideration...)
 

More groovy lists!
30 Lieblingsfilme
(a poll of favorite films)
Best films of the 1970s
The Vatican movie list
Jeeem's Pantheon