Joel Bocko of The Dancing Image recently asked, “What are 100 (of Your) Favorite Movies?” As soon as I read the question, I knew I had to answer. I’m a list junkie: I love reading, collecting, and composing ‘em. I just can’t get enough lists. And, with Sight & Sound’s seventh “greatest films” poll being released in September, there’s been a lot of “list” talk in the air. Roger Ebert wrote about his contribution to the new S&S poll; Criticwire’s Matt Singer asked critics to replace a film in S&S’s top 10; and Film School Rejects’ Cole Abaius announced a 10-best list “according to the Internet.” So lately I’ve been pondering the politics of listmaking… (If you just want to see my 100 movies, skip the next few paragraphs.) So: the favorite/best dichotomy. “Favorite” means it’s a movie you have a personal passion for; “best” implies the existence of a broader standard, beyond the scope of your personal opinion, by which said movie is great. “Favorite” is inarguable: I can make a list of top 10 “favorites” where every entry is Showgirls, and you can’t contradict me. “Best,” meanwhile, is fodder for debate. It’s a critical evaluation, a value judgment. ”Favorite” is less aggressive, coming as it does with an implicit “IMHO,” whereas “best” is an assertion. It’s an attempt to externalize your personal opinion, to make an argument on the basis of your critical subjectivity. So which one, as Edgar Wright asked on Twitter, should be referenced when participating in “greatest films” polls?

First of all, I think people (especially on the Internet—surprise, surprise) exaggerate the gulf between “favorite” and “best.” This corresponds to the popular conception of cinema as Fun Entertainment Movies vs. Serious Art Films, with the former describing what movie lovers actually want to see (and list) while the latter represents a set of viewing/listmaking obligations, chores, vegetables. So, for example, we get plenty of participants in the Film School Rejects poll making faux-apologies for their “populist” choices, or (to quote one voter) for their lack of ”superiorly-crafted dramas chock-full of Academy Award winners.”

This vision of listmaking postulates favorite/best and art/entertainment as a series of never-the-twain-shall-meet propositions. But when drawing up my own lists for Joel’s challenge, I found these categories muddled and entangled. The movies I saw as “best” had only revealed themselves to me through repeated viewings, growing and deepening each time I experienced them, to the point that they were my favorites. A handful of the movies I gravitated toward are kitschy, hacky, or just “bad,” but I don’t see that as mutually exclusive with their power, meaning, or brilliance. In an expanded S&S-style poll, I’d eagerly advocate for every movie on my list.

Because for me, one of the lessons of this exercise is that personal taste and a film’s quality react together in startling ways. It doesn’t matter how closely your list matches the consensus, or how radically it deviates. A film critic is only as good as the eloquence of their defenses and the strength of their loves. The list below is a big, silly snapshot. It’s populated by some of my “favorites” and some of my “bests,” but for the most part these are 100 films I really like and would encourage folks to watch. Which, I think, is ultimately the best use of a list: it can be a picture of you as a moviegoer, yes, or a gesture toward canon-building, but fundamentally it just says, “These movies are pretty good. If you haven’t, check ‘em out.”

My 100

Starting out, I decided to craft my own if-I-were-polled-by-Sight-&-Sound top 10. In alphabetical order, they are: Cría Cuervos, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Meshes of the Afternoon, Mulholland Dr., Nashville, The Night of the Hunter, Persona, Sunset Blvd., Sunrise, and The Third Man. They contain some of my favorite performances—Ana Torrent! Ronee Blakley! Gloria Swanson!—and some of my favorite images: Maya Deren plucking a key from her mouth, Shelley Winters’ hair floating like seaweed, Harry Lime’s flickering grin, etc. These are ten movies I could not do without. (And for the record, my answer to the Criticwire poll linked to above is “replace 2001 with Sunset Blvd.“)

[Another lesson gleaned from this process: it doesn't matter. Narrowing my favorite movies down to 10 or even 100 doesn't mean I love any of the left-off movies any less, because 1) it's all so arbitrary and 2) it's not like I have a finite amount of movie love. If you asked me tomorrow, I might overhaul my whole top 10. A lot of different movies are great for wildly differing reasons.]

So where do you go from there? Well, I went through the usual listmaking procedures. I pored over and cherry-picked preexisting lists, trying to stick to a one-film-per-director rule. (Four exceptions slipped through, though. Challenge question: who are they?) I inserted some beloved horror movies, comedies, musicals, melodramas, and film noir. Some statistical fun: approximately 1/3 of these movies were produced outside of the United States. 1/20 of them were directed by women. 2/5 were made after 1970. But before I bore you, let me just say: These movies are pretty good. If you haven’t, check ‘em out.

···

American Psycho (2000) · Annie Hall (1977) · L’Atalante (1934) · Beauty and the Beast (1946) · Bigger Than Life (1956) · The Birds (1963) · Bonnie and Clyde (1967) · The Brave Little Toaster (1987) · Breaking the Waves (1996) · Bride of Frankenstein (1935) · Bringing Up Baby (1938) · Cabaret (1972) · Carrie (1976) · Cat People (1942) · Un Chant d’Amour (1950) · Un Chien Andalou (1927) · Chopping Mall (1986) · Citizen Kane (1941) · Claire’s Knee (1970) · The Conversation (1974) · Cría Cuervos (1976) · Detour (1945) · The Devil Is a Woman (1935) · Double Indemnity (1944) · Dr. Strangelove (1964) · Duck Soup (1933) · Election (1999) · The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) · A Face in the Crowd (1957) · Female Trouble (1974) · The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) · The Fly (1986) · Forbidden Planet (1956) · Force of Evil (1948) · Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) · Glen or Glenda (1953) · Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) · Häxan (1922) · The Heartbreak Kid (1972) · The Heart of the World (2000) · Heavenly Creatures (1994) · Hellzapoppin’ (1941) · I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) · Ikiru (1953) · Imitation of Life (1959) · It Happened One Night (1934) · It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) · Jeanne Dielman (1975) · Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) · King Kong (1933) · The King of Comedy (1983) · Kiss Me Deadly (1955) · Koyaanisqatsi (1983) · The Lady Eve (1941) · Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) · The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) · Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) · The Manchurian Candidate (1962) · The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) · Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) · Metropolis (1927) · Modern Times (1936) · Mulholland Dr. (2001) · Nashville (1975) · The Night of the Hunter (1955) · Pandora’s Box (1928) · Paris Is Burning (1990) · Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) · Persona (1966) · Phantasm (1979) · Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) · Playtime (1967) · Punch-Drunk Love (2002) · Repo Man (1984) · Repulsion (1965) · RoboCop (1987) · The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) · Rules of the Game (1939) · Sherlock Jr. (1924) · Spirited Away (2001) · The Story of a Cheat (1936) · Sunrise (1927) · Sunset Blvd. (1950) · Sweet Smell of Success (1957) · Talk to Her (2002) · The Thing (1982) · The Third Man (1949) · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) · Tokyo Story (1953) · Ugetsu (1953) · The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) · The Unknown (1927) · Velvet Goldmine (1998) · Week End (1967) · What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) · White Heat (1949) · The Wicker Man (1973) · Wings of Desire (1987) · The Wrong Trousers (1993) · Zodiac (2007)

Last month, I wrote up a list of “Obscure-ish Movies of the 1940s,” inspired by Catherine of Cinema Enthusiast and her decade-by-decade viewing schedule. Now she’s moving on to the ’50s, and so am I! Below are 50 more obscure-ish movie recommendations. (I say “obscure-ish,” mind you, because obscurity is so relative.) And so you know, this list was almost dominated by Samuel Fuller, Anthony Mann, and Nicholas Ray, so you can really just pretend that the entirety of their ’50s outputs are there.

1950

• Caged
• The Furies
• Panic in the Streets
• The Sound of Fury
• Young Man with a Horn

1951

• His Kind of Woman
• The Man from Planet X
• The Man in the White Suit
• The River
• The Tales of Hoffman

1952

• The Marrying Kind
• On Dangerous Ground
• Scandal Sheet
• The Sniper
• Sudden Fear

1953

• Beat the Devil
• The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
• The Hitch-Hiker
• Niagara
• I Vitelloni

1954

• Animal Farm
• Hobson’s Choice
• The Naked Jungle
• Salt of the Earth
• Touchez pas au grisbi

1955

• The Big Combo
• Cast a Dark Shadow
• I Live in Fear
• The Phenix City Story
• La Pointe Courte

1956

• Seven Men from Now
• Street of Shame
• Tea and Sympathy
• While the City Sleeps
• The Wrong Man

1957

• A Face in the Crowd
• Forty Guns
• The Invisible Boy
• Tokyo Twilight
• 20 Million Miles to Earth

1958

• Bell, Book and Candle
• The Defiant Ones
• The Horse’s Mouth
• Man of the West
• Murder by Contract

1959

• A Bucket of Blood
• Night of the Ghouls
• Room at the Top
• Santa Claus
• The Tingler

Oh my god, it’s Peter Lorre with two kitties on him! That’s just like the cutest thing ever. Pussy Goes Grrr’s been fairly quiet this past week, but lots of goodies soon to come: some list-tastic posts, some reviews, and of course the Queer Film Blogathon on the horizon. But for now, a few links:

• This is morbid: “The Nine Circles of Hell, As Depicted In LEGO.”
• Jay C of The Documentary Blog has a list of “Documentaries That Draw Inspiration From Genre Cinema.”
• A series of “Minimalist Studio Ghibli Movie Posters.”
• For your monster-measuring needs, here’s a “Movie monster sizes comparison chart.”
• For those of you who love gear-shifting, here’s “Just The Gear Shifting” from the Fast and the Furious movies.
• Matt Barry on “William Cameron Menzies and the Art of Production Design.”

This week’s kitty is from Scary Movie 2, and it’s a lot less benign than most. I mean, it’s been beating the shit out of Anna Faris, and now it’s giving her the finger! Bad kitty! But still, it’s a kitty. Anyway, here’s a bunch of cool links…

• Andrew Wheeler at the Comics Alliance writes “The Gayness of Batman: A Brief History.”
• “What if Edward Gorey drew Lovecraft’s unspeakable horrors?”
• Erich Kuersten: “1933, not 1939, is the greatest year for classic movies.”
• An infographic on “Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice.”
• Adam Kuntavanish at The Next Projection has a phenomenal list of “Films on My Hypothetical Sight & Sound Ballot.”
• An art student illustrated postcolonial concepts on tea bags: “Post-Colonial Tea Party”!
• Lee Byung-hun.

We just have one particularly over-the-top search term this week: “violence horror pussy bloody operation.” That says it all, really.

Ah, The Exorcist (1973). That Most Iconic of Horror Movies. That onslaught of sacrilege, holy water, and pea soup vomit (or so pop culture would have you believe). It’s this week’s pick for The Film Experience’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” series, and you know what? Beyond being a repository of gory iconography, it’s a seriously good-looking movie. William Friedkin and Owen Roizman—the latter of whom also lensed ’70s classics like The Stepford Wives and Network—shoot it mostly as a domestic drama, where drab colors and cozy furnishings belie the growing evil. As the exorcism nears, though, they employ some stark chiaroscuro.

That’s when we get the famous shot above, one of my favorites, with Father Merrin going up to the MacNeils’ house. Borrowing, I think, from The Night of the Hunter’s expressionism, it’s a tantalizing prelude to the film’s expulsive climax; it charts just how far this urban homestead has descended into gothic madness. Merrin’s silhouette suggests a man of mystery, a man burdened by unpleasant knowledge who remains (judging by that toolkit) an absolute professional. He’ll be shaken up soon, th0ugh, thanks to one very special girl.

Together, these constitute my favorite image in The Exorcist. (To avoid cheating, though, I’ll name the lower-right shot as “best.”) They showcase Linda Blair’s decidedly normal-girl visage as it transforms, through the addition of scars and contact lenses, into that of a demon incarnate. But it’s not just makeup and Mercedes McCambridge’s voice that enact this metamorphosis. Blair’s whole demeanor changes: without losing the audience’s eye contact, she goes from victim to agent of terror, and her attitude shifts from bed-ridden supplication to caustic resentment.

Her camera-directed gaze establishes a visual continuity between the before and after, and in both phases, it’s haunting. It implicates us in both her suffering and her demon-induced rage. I find that hospital-bound before picture the most disturbing, though. Pazuzu’s condescension is one thing, but Blair’s pallor and confusion are hard to stomach. She just looks like a sick little girl who’d much rather be drawing or playing than smothered under layers of medical equipment. And as she catches our eyes, she seems to be asking—calmly, patiently, with good humor—“Why me?”

All that vomit and blood would be meaningless without this sick little girl. Her pain is what makes The Exorcist is so scary.

I know we just wrapped up the Short Animation Blogathon, but time and tide wait for no blogger. So it’s time for another special announcement: we’ll be co-hosting the second Queer Film Blogathon from June 18-22, 2012 alongside the wonderful Caroline of Garbo Laughs!

As Caroline puts it, the purpose of this blogathon is to celebrate “lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or otherwise non-heterosexual, non-gender-binary depictions or personages in film!” So cut loose, enjoy yourself, and write about whatever you like, so long as it falls under that very broad umbrella. (You don’t need to declare your topic ahead of time; any overlaps between contributions are fine.) Once this party gets underway in a month and a half, all submitted posts will be linked to both here and at Garbo Laughs. Twice the linkage! Twice the queer fun!

And to make this blogathon even better, we’ll be holding a raffle at each site, probably for books about LGBT cinema. (Prizes and rules TBA.) So, wanna join in? Then please RSVP in the comments either here or on Caroline’s announcement, and we’ll add you to the list of participants below. Finally, she also whipped up a series of beautiful banners to publicize the blogathon:

Participating Sites:

• Backlots
• Classic Movies
• The Filmatelist
• Garbo Laughs
• The Hollywood Revue
• Krell Laboratories
• Labuza Movies
• Memories of the Future
• Pussy Goes Grrr
• True Classics

It’s a kitty! Being cuddled by Jimmy Stewart! In William Wellman’s Magic Town (1947)! How cute. Similarly cute are all these fun links:

• “Looking at you”: a fun, must-watch compilation of movie characters looking at the camera.
• The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40.”
• Hoo-hah! Jeremy at Moon In The Gutter put up his “20 Favorite Pacino Performances.”
• Mental Floss’s Rob Lammle has “A Brief History of Sierra On-Line,” if you’re an aficionado of ’90s computer games.
• “Skywalking”: a terrifying fad among Russian teens, apparently. If, like me, you’re afraid of heights, these are some intensely scary photos.
• Every shot in Children of Men that’s 45 seconds or longer. In other words, Lubezki porn.
• Harmless: a Christian found footage horror movie about a haunted box of porn. Yes. (It even has a Kickstarter, if you’re so inclined.)
• Anna Paquin: “[Bisexuality is] not a lack of decision. It’s not being greedy or numerous other ignorant things I’ve heard at this point.” [H/t Nathaniel]

A pair of funny search terms this week: first, “do princesses fuck commoners”? Good question. Second, “what does a wolves vagina look like”? Not-so-good question.

Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern (1991), the subject of this week’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” over at The Film Experience, is a feast for the eyes. It’s one painterly image after another, with the sumptuous set design only outdone by the gorgeous lighting. But this beauty is lined with pain. It goes hand in hand with the traditions that constrain four wives of the same man in 1920s China, pitting them against one another and forcing them to play by the patriarchal rules. Teetering between self-interest and sisterhood, these women wage wars and form tentative alliances underneath the film’s lush surface.

The most adept of these warriors is Meishan (He Caifei), the Third Mistress and a former opera singer. As such, she’s every inch the diva, and her star entrance (pictured above) is one of my favorite shots in the film. Late for dinner, she slides into the room and instantly everyone’s eyes are on her. Yet aside from that red dress, she’s not overtly attention-grabbing; her expression is a little calculating, a little condescending, but mostly just detached. It’s all a subtle performance for the benefit of her husband and rivals. I love the way she tilts and sways, taking her sweet time to approach the table. Her years of domestic battle are manifested in her movement, because even a simple entrance has tactical significance.

As Meishan knows, it’s all about appearance. Life in Raise the Red Lantern’s China is driven by pageantry, and my favorite shot comes from the film’s most elaborate pageant—Fourth Mistress (and protagonist) Songlian’s wedding night. Tucked between a ritual foot massage and a night of ritual sex, it’s one of the film’s magnificent long shots. Songlian lies on its horizon, the point of convergence for diagonal lines rising out of its corners. But the composition isn’t merely elegant: it’s also dehumanizing, positing her as merely a piece of this ritualized mise-en-scène.

She’s subsumed by the grandeur and sanctity of the red lanterns. The lanterns: physical objects through which Yimou and virtuoso cinematographer Zhao Fei drench the boudoir in atmosphere, but also signifiers of household law. Thanks to the lanterns, it’s clear that this isn’t so much a wedding night as an instantiation of tradition, a further reassurance that the husband’s lineage will be passed on. It isn’t about Songlian at all. Her oppression is encoded into the shot’s visual majesty, making its pain just as great as its beauty.

Today we reach the end of our Short Animation Blogathon! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed–you all wrote amazing things about a huge variety of animation. One of our more selfish goals with this blogathon was to introduce ourselves to more short animation and, thanks to all of you, it was a complete success! To close out the week, here’s my own write up on some of my favorite short animation and the last of the links!

Ashley’s Hour of Short Animation

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (Chuck Jones, 1965, 10 minutes). When I would watch Looney Tunes, as I invariably did every single day in my early childhood (especially in my pre-kindergarten days), I would hope and pray for The Dot and the Line to come on. The straight-edged Line, vivacious Dot, and coarse Squiggle star in a tale of unrequited love, despair, self-discovery, and triumph, smoothly narrated by Robert Morley. I was drawn in by the soft colors and shapes, captivated by the intricate, delicate designs used by the Line to woo the Dot, and most importantly, intrigued by the abstract form of storytelling, which seemed so starkly unique when set beside the very straightforward, blunt stories of Bugs Bunny and the like. It was unlike everything else in the Looney Tunes lineup and as a result, it was (and still is) my favorite.

Susie the Little Blue Coupe (Clyde Geronimi, 1952, 7 minutes). Unlike The Dot and the Line, this is not a cartoon from my childhood, though it feels like one. I was first introduced to this cartoon last summer by Pussy Goes Grrr’s friend and contributor Jacob Canfield, who designed our lovely banner for this blogathon. I couldn’t get over how blatant the metaphors in this story were: we watch as Susie, a bright little blue car who symbolizes a ’50s trophy wife, rises, falls, and is reborn. I don’t want to get too into the details since I’m working on a larger, more in-depth post about this cartoon but suffice it to say that if you haven’t seen this, you should definitely check it out.

What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones, 1957, 7 minutes). Back to Chuck Jones and the cartoons of my youth—what is there to say about What’s Opera, Doc? that hasn’t been said countless times? It’s one of the best cartoons ever, possibly Jones’ and co.’s best, and definitely my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon. So much passion and emotion packed into 7 little minutes, while still maintaining the lightness and frivolity of the average Merrie Melodies toon (even with its darkly funny ending).

Harvie Krumpet (Adam Elliot, 2003, 22 minutes). After I watched the heartbreaking Mary and Max (2009), I sought out Adam Elliot’s earlier short Harvie Krumpet and was pleased to find the same quirky storytelling and humor that made me love Mary and Max so much. Elliot’s strange claymation worlds have a certain charm and darkness to them that seem to tug and pull at each other until they find a perfect balance—as in the case of Harvie Krumpet, who, despite calamity after calamity disrupting his life, develops an optimistic and supremely eccentric outlook. Harvie Krumpet manages to successfully and profoundly tackle broad themes of life, death, self-fulfillment, aging, happiness, and fate more effectively in 22 minutes than many films could ever hope to with a feature-length running time.

Bob’s Birthday (Alison Snowden and David Fine, 1993, 12 minutes) This is a cartoon that, despite being so obviously intended for adults, is still a cartoon from my childhood. When I was a kid, I had trouble sleeping, and I also had a television with cable in my room, which meant if I wanted to I could stay up all night watching TV. In Cartoon Network’s pre-Adult Swim days, they ran a show of adult animation called O Canada at midnight and I watched it a lot. Bob’s Birthday, the Academy Award-winning short that led to the Bob and Margaret TV series, is the short I remember most vividly from those late nights. I was hyper-aware of the fact that this was not meant for kids and yet here I was, watching this mundanely funny toon about Bob’s embarrassing midlife crisis—and just imagine my sense of wonder and rebellion when Bob walked on screen with no fucking pants on. I was like, ten. And here was animated, extremely non-sexual penis on cable television. It definitely altered my little brain, for the better.

And now to conclude Pussy Goes Grrr’s Short Animation Blogathon, here are the final links:

• Stacia from She Blogged by Night writes “A Delightful Hour of Animated Shorts (Not the Kind You Wear) (Probably),” a fantastic write-up about Adult Swim-era animation. She gives some history and insight on the ways Cartoon Network attempted to grow up with it’s demographic, cashing in on the nostalgic yearnings of twentysomething college students who grew up with Looney Tunes, plus a little X-rated, animated fun thrown in for good measure.

• And we end, appropriately, with one more dose of the Fleischer Brothers. KC from Classic Movies has “Random Picks” for us, including a salacious line-up of Betty Boop cartoons, an early animated short, and a personal favorite of mine, Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart as narrated by James Mason.

If you have any additional posts for the blogathon, please send them to us and they will get linked. Otherwise, this concludes our fun week of celebrating animation. Thanks to all our lovely contributors and readers! We hope you saw some great cartoons.

• Sure enough, we had one last submission: the estimable David Cairns also took on Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line, unexpectedly positioning it vis-à-vis Vertigo. I couldn’t have asked for a better blogathon coda.