Greats or Favorites? How to Make a List of 100 Top Films

The recent Sight and Sound list of The Critics’ Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time and the Variety list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time got me to think about my own criteria for creating such a list, and the distinctions between “Best films” and “Favorite films.” The problem with the Sight and Sound and Variety lists is that they’re created by committees and are designed to appeal to a variety of different fan bases and constituencies. Choosing 100 gives plenty of room to placate as many different factions as possible, with cultural politics often playing a role and the ranking based on the number of votes the films get. A Great or Best film should be lauded, taught, studied, and viewed repeatedly. But, for me at least, there should be some unifying set of aesthetic principles linking the films and a recognition of their cultural, social and artistic importance within the context of their production and release, making their inclusion on the list obvious. This is hard to do when you’re relying on committee and other input for the choices. I agreed with 16 of Sight and Sound’s choices and 19 of Variety’s. While some of the odder choices, particularly on the Variety list, made me cringe (and I won’t name names), there’s a huge middle ground of films represented that I never felt strongly enough about to include on such a list myself but which I can accept as meeting the various criteria employed by this sampling of critics. And there are numerous non-Asian foreign critical favorites I never bothered to see. I also have much narrower criteria on which to base such a list than the folks involved in the creation of these.

Any list I make of “Best” or “Great” films turns out to be different from a list I make of Favorites, although there’s bound to be some overlap. It’s easy for someone with my background to list, say, ten, twenty or fifty of the Greatest Films Ever Made, based on established classics, critical darlings, film school perennials, titles aired frequently on TV, and those lauded in film histories. Many of these were stamped on my film-loving consciousness when I first began to study film history seriously as an adolescent and teen.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock

CASABLANCA (1943) Dir.: Michael Curtiz

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) Dir.: William Wyler

SUNSET BLVD (1950) Dir.: Billy Wilder

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) Dir.: Elia Kazan

But with Favorites, such a list tends to expand easily into the triple digits. I have to include films from a wider range of genres and styles than I do the Best Films, from melodramas, westerns and sci-fi to samurai, kung fu, and anime, many seen after I became immersed in various Asian genres in the 1990s.

MILDRED PIERCE (1945) Dir.: Michael Curtiz

VERA CRUZ (1954) Dir.: Robert Aldrich

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) Dir.: Don Siegel

SAMURAI, PART 1 (1954) Dir.: Hiroshi Inagaki

THE HEROIC ONES (1970) Dir.: Chang Cheh

GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) Dir.: Mamoru Oshii

A Great Film is one that strikes me as artistically and stylistically unique, reflecting the work of a visionary director, serving up a larger theme that resonates with a wide audience across cultural and language boundaries, but one that especially strikes a personal chord with me. It helps to have some degree of critical reputation backing it up, both when it was first released and now, although that isn’t required since plenty of great movies were initially dismissed or ignored by mainstream critics, including many associated with “disreputable” genres. Some examples of films that took time, sometimes years, to develop critical followings are these:

STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940) Dir.: Boris Ingster

DETOUR (1945) Dir.: Edgar G. Ulmer

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) Dir.: Jack Arnold

THE WILD ANGELS (1966) Dir.: Roger Corman

THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN (1978) Dir.: Lau Kar Leung

Since I grew up watching and studying classic Hollywood and foreign films of the black-and-white era and learning to appreciate the artistry of those films when I was most impressionable as a film student, those are the ones that dominate any list I make of Great Films.

THE SCARLET EMPRESS (1934) Dir.: Josef Von Sternberg

GRAND ILLUSION (1937) Dir.: Jean Renoir

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) Dir.: John Huston

THE BIG SLEEP (1946) Dir.: Howard Hawks

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) Dir.: Elia Kazan

THE APARTMENT (1960) Dir.: Billy Wilder

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) Dir.: John Ford

Best Films and Favorites still have to be re-watched every decade or so to confirm their status as my perceptions change. My appreciation of a film’s psychological landscape often grows with age as does my impatience with wild implausibilities which can sometimes rule a film out for continued consideration as a favorite. For example, recent re-watches of two favorite Alfred Hitchcock films resulted in major re-evaluations. One resonated with me emotionally in a deeper way than ever, while the other drove through massive pot holes that were too glaring for me to ignore this time.

MARNIE (1964) Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock

For the record, among the top 20 on Sight and Sound’s recent poll are four that I would include on my own top 20 list: CITIZEN KANE, TOKYO STORY, THE SEARCHERS, and SEVEN SAMURAI. There were an additional twelve among the rest of Sight and Sound’s top 100 that I would include.

CITIZEN KANE (1941) Dir.: Orson Welles

TOKYO STORY (1952) Dir.: Yasujiro Ozu

THE SEARCHERS (1956) Dir.: John Ford

SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) Dir.: Akira Kurosawa

My list of Favorites, on the other hand, varies and shifts through the decades. Originally, my favorites were those films I saw in theaters in childhood and adolescence which captivated, excited and moved me more than other films. Many of these films were reissued regularly so I got to see them multiple times in theaters. For years, my top four were WEST SIDE STORY, THE GREAT ESCAPE, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, and THE LONGEST DAY and all remain among my favorites. The first five James Bond films with Sean Connery were also reissued regularly and they joined my favorites. So were the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood Italian westerns known as the “Man with No Name” trilogy. Another was Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH. I’ve seen several of these films over 30 times each, so they earn top spots on my list, even if I start to have misgivings about some of them on their most recent watches. There’s another one that I only saw once on the big screen, but many times since over the last five decades, on broadcast TV, VHS, cable, DVD, and Blu-ray: Robert Aldrich’s THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967).

WEST SIDE STORY (1961) Directors: Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins

THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) Dir.: John Sturges

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) Dir.: Stanley Kramer

THE LONGEST DAY (1962) Directors: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) Dir.: Lewis Gilbert

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1967) Dir.: Sergio Leone

THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) Dir.: Robert Aldrich

THE WILD BUNCH (1969) Dir.: Sam Peckinpah

And let’s not forget the films I’ve seen as many times as these, dating back to childhood viewings on television, as well as in revival theaters and, in more recent years, on physical media:

KING KONG (1933) Dir.: Ernest B. Schoedsack

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) Dir.: Eugene Lourie

THEM! (1954) Dir.: Gordon Douglas

GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956) Directors: Ishiro Honda, Terry Morse

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) Dir.: Cy Endfield

After high school, I began to play closer attention to the classic films that played on late-night television or in the revival theaters I began attending even before college and the list of Favorites expanded to include more of these.

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932) Dir.: Josef Von Sternberg

FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) Dir.: Lloyd Bacon

BOMBSHELL (1933) Dir.: Victor Fleming

THE BANK DICK (1940) Dir.: Edward F. Cline

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) Dir.: John Ford

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock

KISS ME DEADLY (1955) Dir.: Robert Aldrich

FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) Dir.: Fred M. Wilcox

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957) Dir.: John Sturges

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) Dir.: John Sturges

FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966) Dir.: Francois Truffaut

LE SAMOURAI (1967) Dir.: Jean-Pierre Melville

I was also expanding my horizons and attending theaters to see the new Hollywood filmmakers, along with new foreign and independent works which were creating a whole new zeitgeist for my generation:

PUTNEY SWOPE (1969) Dir.: Robert Downey Sr.

Z (1969) Dir.: Costa-Gavras

JOE (1970) Dir.: John Avildsen

EASY RIDER (`1969) Dir.: Dennis Hopper

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) Dir.: John Schlesinger

M*A*S*H (1970) Dir.: Robert Altman

Some films from this period I’ve had the opportunity to re-watch in recent years and I still hold them in high regard. When I watched NOTHING BUT A MAN on TCM earlier this year for the first time in 50 years, I was reminded what a great film it is.

NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964) Dir.: Michael Roemer

Yet far too many of the acclaimed films of that era remain memories, since I have not made the effort to revisit many of them in the decades since. For instance, until earlier this year I hadn’t seen Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE since its original release in 1975, so I watched it on a VHS copy taped off TCM years ago. It did not age well for me nor do I think a higher grade format was necessary.

The films from the 1970s that hold the greatest attraction for me now and get the most repeat viewings are the ones that offered a much more jaundiced view of the counterculture than some of those I just mentioned. My American favorites from that decade have turned out to be films like these:

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) Dir.: William Friedkin

DIRTY HARRY (1971) Dir.: Don Siegel

SHAFT (1971) Dir.: Gordon Parks

TROUBLE MAN (1972) Dir.: Ivan Dixon

THE SEVEN-UPS (1973) Dir.: Philip D’Antoni

MEAN STREETS (1973) Dir.: Martin Scorsese

TAXI DRIVER (1976) Dir.: Martin Scorsese

A rather grim bunch, I must say.

That same decade, I began attending Japanese films at various repertory theaters in New York, with special attention to samurai classics, many of which would become favorites after several more viewings, especially after home video editions appeared much later.

CHUSHINGURA (1962) Dir.: Hiroshi Inagaki

THE SWORD OF DOOM (1966) Dir.: Kihachi Okamoto

SAMURAI REBELLION (1967) Dir.: Masaki Kobayashi

SHINSENGUMI (1970, aka BAND OF ASSASSINS) Dir.: Tadashi Sawashima

Also in the 1970s, I sampled Hong Kong kung fu films in neighborhood theaters before becoming fully immersed in the genre some 20-odd years later. Here are four that I saw in theaters back then and have seen many times since in various formats:

KING BOXER (1972, aka FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH) Dir.: Cheng Chang-Ho

THE WATER MARGIN (1972, released in the U.S. as SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON) Directors: Chang Cheh, Wu Ma, Pao Hsueh Li

FIST OF FURY (1972, released in the U.S. as THE CHINESE CONNECTION) Dir.: Lo Wei

WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES (1973, released in the U.S. as STING OF THE DRAGON MASTERS) Dir.: Huang Feng

Years later, beginning in the 1990s, I became obsessed with new waves of Hong Kong films, many seen in Chinatown theaters, and found a source for VHS tapes of new Japanese animation and was soon immersed in a whole new class of Favorites. I also gained new appreciation for Japanese kaiju (giant monster) films, starting with the new Godzilla films beginning in 1989, known as the Heisei Godzilla films, and the new trilogy of Gamera films that began in 1995.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988) Dir.: Isao Takahata

HARD-BOILED (1992) Dir.: John Woo

GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1992) Dir.: Takao Okawara

SWORDSMAN III: THE EAST IS RED (1993) Directors: Ching Siu Tung, Raymond Lee

PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997) Dir.: Hayao Miyazaki

Granted, one has to be a fan of kaiju, kung fu or wuxia to consider GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, SHAOLIN TEMPLE and DRAGON INN among the Greatest Films of All Time. I would include them among the greatest examples of their genres and among my personal favorites, to be sure, but I wouldn’t expect either title to be on the Sight and Sound or Variety lists, much as that would please me.

GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (1995) Dir.: Shusuke Kaneko

SHAOLIN TEMPLE (1976) Dir.: Chang Cheh

DRAGON INN (1992) Dir.: Raymond Lee

This changes with anime since I have routinely recommended Hayao Miyazaki films to non-anime fans and do not hesitate to consider LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, or WHISPER OF THE HEART as Great Films. TOTORO and Miyazaki’s later film, SPIRITED AWAY, are indeed on one or the other of those lists I cited.

LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY (1986) Dir.: Hayao Miyazaki

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988) Dir.: Hayao Miyazaki

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989) Dir.: Hayao Miyazaki

WHISPER OF THE HEART (1995) Dir.: Yoshifumi Kondo

On the other hand, I have a harder time promoting any of the annual Pokémon theatrical movie spinoffs. As much as I love them, I would never try to convince any adult to watch one. There’s an inexplicable bias against Pokémon movies among any and all film fans over the age of ten.

POKEMON THE MOVIE: SECRETS OF THE JUNGLE (2021) Dir.: Tetsuo Yajima

This year, 2022, I finally re-watched two Great Films by Yasujiro Ozu on Criterion discs, after having seen them only once each on VHS in the early 20th century. Now I can comfortably include them on my list of Great Films: LATE SPRING (1949), seen on Blu-ray, and TOKYO STORY (1953), on DVD. But, are they favorites? The problem with films like these is that they’re demanding and require time, patience, concentration, and energy to fully appreciate them. How often can one devote that time and energy? I’d certainly not want to break up a viewing of them with meal breaks or sleep. But I do feel they need to be seen more times to be on a list of Favorites.

LATE SPRING (1949) Dir.: Yasujiro Ozu

TOKYO STORY (1952) Dir.: Yasujiro Ozu

On the other hand, I love one of Ozu’s lighter films, EARLY SUMMER (1951), which I only have on VHS and have seen more times than I have any other Ozu titles. It’s shorter, less complicated, smaller in scale and more focused on a handful of characters. And it’s easy to pop into a VCR and press “play.” Is it my favorite Ozu? I don’t know. I just saw THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE for the third or fourth time (opening my Criterion disc of it for the first time) and maybe that would be my favorite, although I’m sure LATE SPRING or TOKYO STORY would attain that top spot after a third or fourth viewing. Can’t I just say that all four are my favorite Ozus? For the record, of course, I wouldn’t dream of ever watching LATE SPRING, TOKYO STORY or THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE again on VHS. (For some reason, I never saw EARLY SUMMER on sale at Barnes & Noble during any of their semi-annual 50% Off Criterion sales and I never thought to look on the Criterion website for it–until now. Time for an upgrade!)

I also re-watched Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON on Criterion disc recently for the first time since last seeing it on VHS earlier this century. (I’d first seen it in a theater back in 1971.) I now feel comfortable placing it as Kurosawa’s second greatest film after SEVEN SAMURAI, moving YOJIMBO down to third place.

RASHOMON (1950) Dir.: Akira Kurosawa

A more recent film requiring a re-watch was SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (2002), a production from Dreamworks, which I hadn’t seen since it was first released 20 years ago. I’ve generally considered this animated western about a wild horse and its encounters with Indians and Cavalry in the 1860s my favorite non-Japanese animated feature of the 21st century. Yet when I realized one day this month that I’d never seen it a second time, I determined to try and see it again soon. The next day I walked into Barnes & Noble and spotted a sale rack with the DVD of SPIRIT on it. I bought it and watched it the next day and confirmed its status: a serious dramatic tale rendered by an American studio in breathtaking 2-D animation with no talking animals and only two well-known actors in the voice cast.

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (2002) Directors: Kelly Asbury, Lorna Cook

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON

The point is that re-watching and re-evaluating are constantly required to form a valid list of great and/or favorite films. I re-watched over 100 favorites/classics this year and have many more to go, including a newly purchased batch of Criterion editions of Kurosawa classics that I’ve only seen once each long ago, including IKIRU, THRONE OF BLOOD, and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. Plus, I have Kurosawa films I still haven’t seen at all, including THE IDIOT, I LIVE IN FEAR, THE LOWER DEPTHS, DO-DES-KA-DEN, and KAGEMUSHA, all but LOWER DEPTHS in Criterion editions.

The newest addition to my list of Greatest Filmmakers is Mikio Naruse. I first saw one of his films in 2010 (WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS) and have seen some 28 films by him since, most since 2017, and I thought many of them were among the greatest Japanese films I’ve ever seen. However, I need to see them each at least a second time to confirm whether they belong on a list or not. I’ve written about several of them here, including FLOWING (1956) and AUTUMN HAS ALREADY STARTED (1960). I’ve seen six films by Naruse this year alone, five for the first time. He’s a work in constant progress.

FLOWING (1956) Dir.: Mikio Naruse

UNTAMED (1957) Dir.: Mikio Naruse

AUTUMN HAS ALREADY STARTED (1960) Dir.: Mikio Naruse

As you can see from this sampling, my collection and my viewing habits are oriented predominantly to classic Hollywood, classic Japanese and Hong Kong films, with a special emphasis on mid-range genre films, as opposed to blockbusters. Which leaves far less time for European arthouse classics, Hollywood epics, indie films or newer work from the U.S., Europe or other Asian countries besides Japan and Hong Kong. Not to mention Africa and all of Latin America (a huge blind spot, I’ll admit). The newest American films I have on my Favorites list are all by Quentin Tarantino. I’ve seen KILL BILL VOL. 1 (2003) over ten times on these formats: theaters, R1 DVD, R2 DVD (the Japanese cut), and Blu-ray, the only film in the 21st century to get that many viewings. I’ve seen ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD 4X, twice on the big screen and twice on Blu-ray. In fact, I’ve seen most of Tarantino’s films multiple times, even the ones I’m not that crazy about. I liked Greta Gerwig’s LITTLE WOMEN when I saw it on the big screen at the end of 2019, but have yet to see it a second time, even though I’ve since seen each of the other versions of LITTLE WOMEN in my collection. I’m eager to re-watch Gerwig’s version and put it on my favorites list, along with the 1933 version which starred Katharine Hepburn and which I re-watched on Christmas morning this month for the first time in years and have added it to my list.

KILL BILL VOL. 1 (2003) Dir.: Quentin Tarantino

ONCE UPON A TIME IN…HOLLYWOOD (2019) Dir.: Quentin Tarantino

LITTLE WOMEN (2019) Dir.: Greta Gerwig

LITTLE WOMEN (1933) Dir.: George Cukor

So any list I make is skewed in ways that you won’t find on lists made by committees.

One final issue I want to address is that of ranking. I don’t like making any list that ranks films in a particular order. I used to do that when I was in high school and college, but since then, I tend to make chronological lists to show the historical progression. How can I determine that a film should be numbered #16 because it is not as good as #15 but better than #17? That’s an absurd distinction to try and make. I can certainly make lists by genre and single out ten great westerns or kung fu or film noir or horror that I think stand out above the others in those genres, but I’m not going to rank the ten in order. Is FRANKENSTEIN better than PSYCHO? They both equally deserve to be at the top rank of the horror genre, but I hesitate to call one greater than the other.

FRANKENSTEIN (1931) Dir.: James Whale

PSYCHO (1960) Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock

Anyway, even though I didn’t make any actual lists here, you’ve read enough to determine what I think some of the Best Films ever made are, what some of my Favorites are, and who I think some of the most important directors are. This is only a sampling. Dozens were left out so as not to clutter the already lengthy piece with endless lists and I’m somewhat appalled that I still haven’t mentioned such favorite filmmakers as Kenji Mizoguchi, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, or Sam Fuller, to name a handful. (Still, over 100 separate films are actually represented by the images chosen here, although a dozen or so would probably not make it to an actual list.)  Of course, I plan to re-watch many of these and shift my views in the years ahead, adding new ones to these categories as I discover them and re-watch them. I mean, here’s a film I first saw in 1997 and thought was great but didn’t see it a second time until 2021 and thought it was even greater. It’s a story of migrants from Mainland China who meet in Hong Kong, fall in love but go on separate paths that result in both of them moving to New York City without knowing the other’s there until an unexpected encounter involving Immigration agents. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching and one of the best Hong Kong films I’ve ever seen: COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996/Dir.: Peter Chan; Stars: Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai).

COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996) Dir.: Peter Chan