42 Best Films

Thanks to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we all now know that "42" is the answer to the universe, so then what better number to group together the best films that I've seen. Well, I guess it's a combination of what I consider to be the best films and my favorites, with an emphasis on best. So, while a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark may be one of my favorite films of all time, it didn't quite make this list. It's a strange balance to strike, and one that will no doubt continue to shift back and forth in my mind as I see new movies and change my mind about old ones. Anyway, I thought that it would be worth posting just the same. So here you go...

1. Star Wars (George Lucas)
2. Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, George Cuckor, et al)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
4. The Searchers (John Ford)
5. The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
6. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer)
9. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
10. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
11. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
12. Persona (Bergman)
13. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
14. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
15. Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
16. The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
17. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
18. Masculin Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
19. The Three Colors Trilogy (Kieslowski)
20. A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes)
21. Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
22. Come and See (Elem Klimov)
23. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg)
24. City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
25. Nazarin (Luis Bunuel)
26. Manhatten (Woody Allen)
27. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
28. F For Fake (Welles)
29. Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
30. Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
31. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
32. Mouchette (Bresson)
33. Winter Light (Bergman)
34. My Life to Live (Godard)
35. How Green Was My Valley (Ford)
36. The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
37. Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
38. Red River (Howard Hawks)
39. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini)
40. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
41. Nashville (Robert Altman)
42. The Up Series (Michael Apted)