In my head I never tried to focus on a "favorite" movie of all time, or whatever. I always had a list, a "List of Five" as it were. (What if we had more fingers?)
There were three movies on my List of Five that were "older" and a fourth that was newer, and these four never fluctuated, and they are all present in my first picture, my First Eleven:
The fifth movie in my List of Five kept changing, depending on my mood or whatever I watched that week (or month), but the point is that spot was a little more fluid. It was always between three different movies.
Then I saw "The Third Man", and my List of Five got upended. I couldn't drop any movie from my pantheon, but I needed to add The Third Man. Life was hard at this point.
It was here that the challenge came up on FB, the naming of ten movies that were too important or too influential for your own viewing habits.
Oh snap, I thought, this is perfect: I've got my ziggurat with four necessaries, the three floaters could all be there, The Third Man can be there, and that leaves the next two most important movies for me, and my List of Ten was done.
Soon after I watched the Battle of Algiers, and I added the image to my First Eleven, and I got to 11, and the idea to start my own Prime Movie Challenge was formed.
So, my First Four:
- Citizen Kane
- On the Waterfront
- Chinatown
- I (Heart) Huckabees
And the fifth spot on the original List of Five went to one of the following:
- Bulworth
- Children of Men
- The King's Speech
The Third Man monkey-wrenched this generally stable five-spot ziggurat. The next two that had outsized influence over me were:
- Pulp Fiction
- The Matrix
And then The Battle of Algiers rounds out the First Eleven.
As far as that picture goes: I (Heart) Huckabees; Pulp Fiction; The Third Man; Children of Men; Bulworth; The Matrix; On the Waterfront; Citizen Kane; The Battle of Algiers; The King's Speech; Chinatown.
My Second Eleven had some movies that I consider super close to the heart as well as some bones being tossed, but lovingly so.
I think I mentioned all of these films in the response to a post, but here we go.
Top row: Dazed and Confused, Last of the Mohicans, Tombstone, Zodiac
Middle row: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gravity, Cool Hand Luke
Bottom row:Into the Spiderverse, The Wild Bunch, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Black Power Mixtape
I still had a bunch of movies I really liked, so I made another 11, a third 11, and wanted it to capture some of the few I couldn't believe I missed and a few others I realized how much I liked. I think I may have mentioned the list in another post comment, and here we go again.
Top row: Dog Day Afternoon, Godfather II, The God's Must be Crazy, Ghostbusters
Middle Row: Empire Strikes Back, Dead Poets Society, Vertigo, Dr. Strangelove
Bottom Row: Temple of Doom, Die Hard, Goodfellas
I was planning on writing a bunch of explanations, like a personal history of my movie tastes or some other boring bullshit, and I probably still will in the future, but mostly for myself. I'd wanted to say more about each of these movies, and see if I could even put together another list, but then I noticed I'd started this post (with the three pictures already added and half of it already written and chilling as a draft) and decided to just finish it, post it, and save the long-winded blah blah blah for later. (Too late.)
