MY List of the “Best” Movies

The thing about movies is, they're story telling that's different from books. In books, the author tries to give enough description that you can picture what's happening, without slowing down the story. In movies, you see the story as it happens, and the visual aspect is equal to the words. Arguably, movies have become more popular than books. Certainly, when a book becomes a movie, more people are exposed to that author's work than ever before.

Someone on my FB feed recently posted a list of the AFI's 100 best movies,  The list could be checked off, and it turned out I had seen only 57 out of that 100.  But the FB post generated an alternative list from Chicago film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. He had a lot of really old and somewhat artier movies, and I only got 5 on his list.

Why should film critics have all the fun? I decided to come up with my own list. I didn't exclude animated movies. My only requirement was that I had seen the movie and liked it for some reason (The Thin Man is on there for the relationship between Nick and Nora. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is there for the visual story telling, etc.). I put The Lord of the Rings as one entry because it was one story, but I listed the first three Star Wars movies by title because they can be viewed separately and I wanted to distinguish them from the second set of movies which were nowhere near as good.

One thing this kind of list points out is that awards are given by year. Plenty of great movies don't win awards because they come out in the same year as other great movies.

Feel free to nominate your own favorites in the comments. I might even add them, as I didn't stick to a specific number. Also, they are not in any particular order, by rank or chronology; they're just as I thought of them,

My top movies of all time

1. Groundhog Day
2. The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! 
3. Bringing Up Baby
4. Desk Set
5. It's a Wonderful Life
6. The Sound of Music
7. Mary Poppins
8. American Graffiti 
9. Notting Hill
10. It's About Time
11. Galaxy Quest
12. Lord of the Rings
13. Three Men and a Baby
14. The Green Mile
15. Forest Gump
16. The Sting
17. Up
18. Toy Story
19. Some Like It Hot
20. The Princess Bride
21. Jurassic Park
22. Auntie Mame
23. The Truman Show
24. The Matrix
25. Tootsie
26. The Graduate
27. Breaking Away
28. Sleepless in Seattle
29. Die Hard
30. Casablanca
31. Star Wars episode 4: A New Hope 
32. Star Wars episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back 
33. Star Wars episode 6: Return of the Jedi
34. Raiders of the Lost Ark
35. Pretty Woman
36. Aladdin (Disney animated version)
37. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
38. Psycho
39. Finding Nemo
40. The Thin Man
41. Heaven Can Wait
42. Miracle on 34th Street (original version)
43. In the Heat of the Night
44. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
45. Moonstruck
46. Shrek
47. The Incredibles
48. The King's Speech
49. Rain Man
50. Beauty and the Beast
51. Sense and Sensibility
52. The Sixth Sense
53. Little Miss Sunshine
54. The Blind Side
55. Argo
56. Erin Brockovich