My Favorite Movies

A movie with an extremely high re-watchability factor. It also has one of the best screenplays ever written and seven actors doing the best work of their careers.

One of those rare movies where all of the elements come together so perfectly, you forget the kind of effort it must take to make a movie this damn good.

Some families have "A Christmas Story" or "It's a Wonderful Life." My family has this :-)

A flawed masterpiece. More significant for its ambition than what it actually achieves, it remains one of the most inventive, rewarding, and entertaining movies ever.

Okay, so it suffers from some minor editing problems. A small price to pay for what they call pure movie magic.

Kurosawa does "King Lear."
And it's better than almost any English-language adaptation ever made.

'Annie Hall' may be the sentimental favorite, but 'Manhattan' is the masterpiece by a nose. It's a flawless marriage of directing, editing, cinematography, writing, acting, and tone. Plus... that opening sequence!

One of the greatest American stage plays adapted by one of America's most versatile directors for America's best-quality cable channel? You do the math. The fastest 6 hours you'll ever spend in front of a TV.

Alter a single part of a single frame, and you have a lesser movie.

Fellini's grand, self-indulgent, beautiful exorcism of his own mid-life crisis. Marcello Mastroianni is so good, you forget he didn't script and direct it himself. Along with 'Sunset Boulevard,' it's among the best movies about making movies.

Bogey as the hero, Bacall as his gal pal, and Edward G. as the heavy, all of them locked down in a steamy Florida Keys hotel during hurricane season. Nothing good can come of this, and watching it all unfold is the stuff of a classic gangster noir melodrama.

My vote for funniest movie of all time.

Someone once said that the first "Godfather" is a symphony, the second one a ballet, and the third one an opera. And, really, can you think of a ballet better than this one?

The movie that launched the film careers of Neil LaBute and Aaron Eckhart. Produced for only a few thousand dollars, it remains their best work. Savage, brutal, and hilarious. You can't watch it just once.

I saw it in the theater.
I bought the DVD.
I'm still unable to watch it all the way through again.

My favorite cartoon of all time, and certainly one of the best and most entertaining book-to-movie adaptations ever. As a bonus, it also features my pick for sexiest cartoon character -- Justin, Captain of the Guard.

This is that movie you tell all your friends about.
But you don't tell them anything except they NEED TO SEE IT.

Brenda Blethyn giving one of the all-time great screen performances... and it's largely improvised!

Many people disagree with me about this, but I'm hard-pressed to find anything wrong with this movie. It's a perfect example of a director achieving exactly what he sets out to achieve -- a paradigm of creative choice-making.

The first time I watched it, I sat through the whole of the ending credits with my mouth open. Then I immediately watched it again.

Postmodern in the right sense of the word. It examplifies everything beautiful and beautifully jagged about life.

Wow! Woody Allen returns to form with a potboiler so fun to watch... well, I watched it five times in two weeks!

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

A sentimental childhood favorite. Backed by glorious original songs by Stephen Sondheim and the now-famous 8-color palette, it remains popcorn of the highest quality.

Leone Fonda Morricone = Mezmerizing. Grittier than any film has a right to be.

It's a quintessential classic for a reason. No one but Kurosawa cuts so incisively into what you think you know... without ever losing sight of the reality of a damn good story.

One of the few movies that makes suburb angest palatable... largely because its angest is, ultimately, the biggest joke it plays on its audience.

One of the most overlooked movies ever made, 'Atanarjuat' has sequences that rank with the greatest images ever captured on film. It's also the only Inuit-language movie in existance and more thrilling than any Hollywood blockbuster.

Neil Simon writes one of the most quotable movies ever. And where else do you find a cast like this doing comedy this funny?

My first experience with Lars von Trier will always be one of the most memorable, because it was the first time I remember being exposed to a movie so emotionally naked.

It made me static, literally, for hours. Everything about it drained me. Both inescapably vast and irreducibly human, it shows you what it means to be a living soul.

It explores of all my favorite themes. Adapted from a notoriously unfilmable novel, it is a feat of technical daring, imagination, and ego-busting humor, all wrapped up in a tight little poststructural package. Jacques Derrida would be proud.

The most fun Coen brothers movie ever.
"You know. For kids."