My Favorite 100 Movies

[Updated 1.5.11]
Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®
(* = recent addition)

The Top 20 (alpha order): 2001, All About Eve, Babe, The Best Years of Our Lives, City of God (Brazil), Cinema Paradiso (Italy), The Conformist (Italy), Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather II, Hannah and Her Sisters, Hero (China), Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France), Lawrence of Arabia, Lord of the Rings

World's Best Nature Films

World's best nature films (updated 1/03/13) *=new




Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992, doc.)*

The Bear (L'ours, 1988)
Flight of the Navigator

Fly Away Home

March of the Penguins (doc.)

Never Cry Wolf (1983)

Planet Earth (2007; mini-series, doc.)

Touching the Void

Walkabout (1971)

White Fang

Winged Migration (2001, doc.)



Dir: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, 2001, France (10*

World's Best Romance Films

The world's best romance films, those without comedy Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars® (* = new additions)










A Room With a View (also in Romantic Comedy)
A Town Like Alice (mini-series)
A Very Long Engagement [photo rt]
The Age of Innocence
An Education * [photo top]
Atonement
Bad Timing, a Sexual Obsession
Brideshead Revisited (mini-series)
Casablanca
Children of a Lesser God
The

World's Best Comedy Films

[* = new additions]


Airplane!
Auntie Mame
Babe
Baby Boom
Beautiful Girls*
Beetlejuice
Being John Malkovich
Born Yesterday
City Slickers
Clueless
Dr. Strangelove (bw)
Driving Miss Daisy
Duck Soup (bw)
Ghostbusters
Going in Style
Good Bye, Lenin!* (Germany)
A Great Wall
Hannah and Her Sisters*
Heathers
Kind Hearts and Coronets (bw)
M*A*S*H
Midnight Run
Mister Roberts
Parenthood
The Producers (

World's Best Children's Films

Live Action / or Mixed
A Christmas Story
A Boy Ten Feet Tall
The Bad News Bears
Babe
Black Stallion, The
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (animated/live mix)
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
Mary Poppins (animated/live action mix)
My Dog Skip
Peter Pan (2002, animated/live action mix) Animated
101 Dalmations (animated)
Beauty and the Beast (animated)
Cars (computer animated)
Finding Nemo (computer

World's Best Westerns

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
The Big Country *
Broken Trail (mini-series)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Claim
Dances With Wolves
The Grey Fox
Into the West (mini-series)
Heartland
Hidalgo
High Noon
Jeremiah Johnson
Lonesome Dove (mini-series)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Open Range
Shane
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Silverado
The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada
Tom Horn
The Treasure of the Sierra

World's Best Musical and Concert Films

A Coal Miner's Daughter
A Hard Days Night
All that Jazz
An American in Paris
Amadeus
Black Orpheus (France/Portugal)
Bride and Prejudice (India)
Carmen (Spain, flamenco version)
Chicago
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
The King and I
The Music Man
My Fair Lady
Singing in the Rain
Strictly Ballroom
West Side Story


Concert Films
The Cranberries: Live Dead Can Dance: Toward the

Double Indemnity and the Birth of Film Noir

Double Indemnity (1944) was Billy Wilder's first serious film, and is given credit for the birth of film noir, literally "night film", which describes a visual style and mood of a type of dramatic film, usually crime, that's much more gritty and realistic than most films prior to this era.

Film noir was mostly shot at night or in dark interiors; there's lots of use of shadows, dimly lit edges,

Great Film: Zhang Yimou's Hero

Hero (2002) is a Chinese epic from director Zhang Yimou. Actor Jet Li said the screenplay (by Li Feng, Zhang Yimou, and Wang Bin) was the best he had ever read and left him in tears. They often call this Jet Li's Hero to distinguish it from an earlier U.S. film (also worth watching but nothing great) starring Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman. Along with Li, the film also stars the most popular

World's Best Drama Films

Films in gold won Best Picture

12 Angry Men (bw)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (bw)
All About Eve (bw)
Amadeus
The Apartment
Broadcast News
Citizen Kane (bw)
Dominick and Eugene (drama)
Elmer Gantry (drama, bw)
Empire Falls (mini-series)
Fearless (Peter Weir's)
Good Will Hunting
Housekeeping
Hud (bw)
The Hustler (bw)
The Last Picture Show (bw)
Little Foxes (bw)
The Magnificent Ambersons (bw)
Midnight

World's Best Action and Adventure

Action and / or adventure films
Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®


The Adventures of Robin Hood
Around the World in 80 Days (original)
Batman
Ben-Hur (10 Oscars)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China)
El Mariachi (Mexico)
The French Connection
The Game
Gladiator
Hero (Jet Li's, China)
La Femme Nikita (France)
The Man Who Would Be King
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
The Raiders of the Lost

World's Best Sports Films

Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®

Breaking Away
Bull Durham
Chariots of Fire
Field of Dreams
Friday Night Lights
Glory Road
Golden Boy
The Great White Hope
Hoop Dreams (doc.)
Hoosiers
Million Dollar Baby
The Natural
Phar Lap
Pride of the Yankees
Raging Bull
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Seabiscuit (remake)


I guess I stretched a bit to make a sports list, as Bull Durham and Breaking Away

The World's Best Films Introduction

We will list and review the greatest films in history, wherever and whenever they were produced. We will also pan those often considered classics by those with either limited exposure or undeveloped powers of artistic discrimination.

Great films: The Best Years of Our Lives, Lawrence of Arabia, City of God, Memento, The Seven Samurai, Hero (Jet Li's), Babe, Finding Neverland, Parenthood, Hannah