100 Films That Made Me Sit Up and Take Notice

Recently, we at Cinemarati, given the mission to make a list of 100 film using as our guide the instruction to choose the films that are most important to each of us, with whatever that might mean to each member being left intentionally undefined, decided to update our film canons, which has given yours truly an opportunity to revisit my first canon submissions by checking out great films, some for the first time, others for the umpteenth, to see how they measure up. Anyways and regardless, you can check out the Cinemarati canon, a product of 14 member critics, by heading here, and you can also take a look at what the 2004 edition of my personal canon looks like, fwiw, and all that by simply scrolling on down this page. This is a necessarily fluid list, as I continue to play catch up (see: The Passion of Joan of Arc, #7), or as new and great films get released (see: Spirited Away, #92, which I already feel is ranked too lowly) my canon has changed in interesting ways since my first list was completed only two years ago.

Coming soon: rationale for each member of my top ten.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Citizen Kane
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
4. Taxi Driver
5. Rear Window
6. Seven Samura
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc
8. Dr. Strangelove (etc…)
9. Annie Hall
10. The General (Keaton)
11. Kieslowski’s Decalogue
12. The Third Man
13. Sherlock Jr.
14. Manhattan
15. Ikiru
16. Jaws
17. A Clockwork Orange
18. The Conversation
19. Do the Right Thing
20. Wings of Desire
21. Persona
22. Manchurian Candidate (1962)
23. Casablanca
24. Trouble in Paradise
25. Vertigo
26. La Jetee
27. Rashomon
28. Chungking Express
29. The Searchers
30. Apocalypse Now!
31. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
32. The Wild Bunch
33. Blue Velvet
34. Rushmore
35. The Exorcist
36. Sunrise
37. The Maltese Falcon
38. This is Spinal Tap
39. Brazil
40. Night of the Hunter
41. Raiders of the Lost Ark
42. Andrei Rublev
43. Audition
44. In the Mood for Love
45. The Godfather I
46. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
47. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
48. Touch of Evil
49. Quai des Orfevres
50. Solaris (Tarkovsky)
51. Repulsion
52. 400 Blows
53. The Vanishing (original)
54. Hallowe’en
55. The Fly (Cronenberg)
56. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
57. Out of the Past
58. Dawn of the Dead
59. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
60. City Lights
61. Touch of Evil
62. Band of Outsiders
63. M
64. E.T.
65. Schindler’s List
66. The Producers
67. L’Atalante
68. North by Northwest
69. Bringing up Baby
70. Red (Kieslowski)
71. Young Frankenstein
72. Groundhog Day
73. Say Anything
74. Alien
75. Truly, Madly, Deeply
76. Kiss Me Deadly
77. Cat People (1947)
78. Blood Simple
79. Psycho
80. Eraserhead
81. Reservoir Dogs
82. The Deer Hunter
83. Macbeth (Polanski)
84. Ran (Kurosawa)
85. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Seigal)
86. Chinatown
87. Pulp Fiction
88. Hidden Fortress
89. Scarlett Empress
90. Bonnie and Clyde
91. Rules of the Game
92. Spirited Away
93. Breaking the Waves
94. Mulholland Dr.
95. Amarcord
96. The Rapture
97. Mean Streets
98. Fiddler on the Roof
99. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
100. Badlands