100 Favorite Films

Every so often, I sit down and make a list of my favorite films. Here's the most recent edition - 100 Films in alphabetical order.

À bout de souffle [Breathless] (1960)
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, The Wrath of God] (1972)
El ángel exterminador [Exterminating Angel] (1962)
Animal Crackers (1930) ***
Ansiktet [The Magician] (1958) ***
Apocalypse Now (1979) ***
L'armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969)
L'atalante (1934)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Band Wagon (1953)
Bande à part (1964)
La belle et la bête [Beauty and the Beast] (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
Bob le flambeur (1956)
Born Yesterday (1950)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***
Capitaine Conan (1996)
Casablanca (1942)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Crna macka, beli macor [Black Cat, White Cat] (1998)
"Dekalog" (1989)
Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)
Desire (1936)
La dolce vita (1960)
Double Indemnity (1944) ***
La double vie de Véronique [The Double Life of Veronique] (1991) ***
Down by Law (1986) ***
Du rififi chez les hommes [Rififi] (1955)
8½ (1963) ***
Les enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945)
El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] (1973)
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain [Amélie] (2001)
French Kiss (1995)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
The Godfather (1972)
La grande illusion (1937)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Help! (1965)
Der Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (1987) ***
His Girl Friday (1940)
Holiday (1938)
Intervista (1987)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Jean de Florette (1986) ***
Kagemusha (1980) ***
Key Largo (1948)
The Lady Eve (1941)
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) ***
Life of Brian (1979)
The Maltese Falcon (1941) ***
Manhattan (1979) ***
The Matrix (1999)
Le mépris [Contempt] (1963)
Midnight (1939)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail [Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen] (1975) ***
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
North by Northwest (1959) ***
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) ***
Orphée (1950) ***
Out of the Past (1947) ***
Pépé le Moko (1937)
Paris, Texas (1984) ***
The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***
Pierrot le fou (1965)
Le quai des brumes [Port of Shadows] (1938)
Quai des Orfèvres (1947)
Quick Change (1990)
Ran (1985) ***
The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) ***
Roman Holiday (1953) ***
Sabrina (1954)
Le salaire de la peur [Wages of Fear] (1953)
Le samouraï (1967)
Shichinin no samurai [The Seven Samurai] (1954)
Silk Stockings (1957)
Simple Men (1992) ***
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957) ***
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Swing Time (1936)
Tengoku to jigoku [High and Low] (1963)
The Thin Man (1934) ***
Three Days of the Condor (1975) ***
Tierra (1996)
To Have and Have Not (1944) ***
Top Hat (1935) ***
Touchez pas au grisbi [Grisbi] (1954)
Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)
The Unbelievable Truth (1989)
Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres (1974)
White Christmas (1954) ***
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Yojimbo (1961)

***Films that also appeared on my list of Favorite 50 Films done in 1995 and Favorite 100 Films done in 2004 (1-50 and 51-100).

By Director

Akira Kurosawa (5) - Kagemusha (1980) ***, Ran (1985) ***, Shichinin no samurai [The Seven Samurai] (1954), Tengoku to jigoku [High and Low] (1963) , Yojimbo (1961)

Jean-Luc Godard (4) - À bout de souffle [Breathless] (1960), Bande à part (1964), Le mépris [Contempt] (1963), Pierrot le fou (1965)

Howard Hawks (4) - Ball of Fire (1941), Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***, His Girl Friday (1940), To Have and Have Not (1944) ***

George Cuckor (3) - Born Yesterday (1950), Holiday (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***

Federico Fellini (3) - La dolce vita (1960), 8½ (1963) ***, Intervista (1987)

Krzysztof Kieslowski (3) - "Dekalog" (1989), La double vie de Véronique [The Double Life of Veronique] (1991) ***, Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)

Jean-Pierre Melville (3) - L'armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969), Bob le flambeur (1956), Le samouraï (1967)

Billy Wilder (3)- Double Indemnity (1944) ***, Sabrina (1954), Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Two Films: Bergman, Carné, Clouzot, Cocteau, Coppola, Curtiz, Hartley, Houston, Jarmusch, Terry Jones, Renoir, Mark Sandrich, Welles, Wyler

By Actors

Cary Grant (7) - The Awful Truth (1937), The Bishop's Wife (1947), Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***, His Girl Friday (1940), Holiday (1938), North by Northwest (1959) ***, The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***

Fred Astaire (5) - The Band Wagon (1953), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Silk Stockings (1957), Swing Time (1936), Top Hat (1935) ***

Humphrey Bogart (5) - Casablanca (1942) Key Largo (1948), The Maltese Falcon (1941) ***, Sabrina (1954), To Have and Have Not (1944) ***

Jean Gabin (5) - La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938), La grande illusion (1937), Pépé le Moko (1937), Le quai des brumes [Port of Shadows] (1938), Touchez pas au grisbi [Grisbi] (1954)

William Holden (5) - Born Yesterday (1950), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Sabrina (1954), Sunset Blvd. (1950), The Wild Bunch (1969)

Three Films: Cyd Charise, Kathrine Hepburn, Marcello Mastroianni, Toshiro Mifune, Yves Montand, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck

By Language

Fifty-seven films were in English. Of the 43 films in other languages, 26 were in French.

By Date
1930s: 17
1940s: 17
1950s: 18
1960s: 14
1970s: 11
1980s: 9
1990s: 13
2000s: 2

Fifty-five films were from before I was born.

Other Films

It's interesting for me to see how my lists have changed over the years. I've discovered or explored more fully different directors (Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker), actors (Gabin, Holden, Stanwyck) and genres (musicals, French film noir and film gris). Films that meant a lot to me at one time just don't resonate as much now. Or, maybe I just haven't seen them in a long time. Here are some films that appeared on my two previous lists.

1995 & 2004
Alice in den Städten [Alice in the Cities] (1974)
Beat the Devil (1953)
The Big Steal (1949)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. [The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly] (1966)
Dom za vesanje [Time of the Gypsies] (1988)
Manon des sources (1986)
Raising Arizona (1987)
'Round Midnight (1986)
Vertigo (1958)
You Can't Take It with You (1938)

1995
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Delicatessen (1991)
Un dimanche à la campagne [A Sunday in the Country] (1984)
Duck Soup (1933)
Europa (1991)
The Fisher King (1991)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Jules et Jim (1962)
The Grifters (1990)
Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

2004
Adam's Rib (1949)
After the Thin Man (1936)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Fanny och Alexander (1982)
Fargo (1996)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Un flic (1972)
Gilda (1946)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
Lone Star (1996)
Nikita (1990)
No Such Thing (2001)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Sting (1973)
The Third Man (1949)
Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993)
The Usual Suspects (1994)

You can also check out the series of posts I did on The Greatest Films of All Time. Twenty-one of my 100 Favorite Films were in the Top 100.

Speaking in Tongues

The current issue of The New York Review of Books features an article by Zadie Smith called "Speaking in Tongues," which discusses the mutability of our voices as we move from one culture or background to another, and how this applies to Barack Obama and the possibilities of his presidency.

It's a fascinating essay, and I highly recommend reading the entire piece. I'm afraid my efforts to provide you with good, coherent excerpts will only butcher her work and wind up being too long for the blog anyway. But I'll make an attempt.

After discussing her own move from a working-class section of London to Cambridge and how it affected her physical voice, she explores the figure of Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmallion:

By the end of his experiment, Professor Higgins has made his Eliza an awkward, in-between thing, neither flower girl nor lady, with one voice lost and another gained, at the steep price of everything she was, and everything she knows. . . .

How persistent this horror of the middling spot is, this dread of the interim place! It extends through the specter of the tragic mulatto, to the plight of the transsexual, to our present anxiety —disguised as genteel concern—for the contemporary immigrant, tragically split, we are sure, between worlds, ideas, cultures, voices—whatever will become of them? Something's got to give—one voice must be sacrificed for the other. What is double must be made singular.

But this, the apparent didactic moral of Eliza's story, is undercut by the fact of the play itself, which is an orchestra of many voices, simultaneously and perfectly rendered, with no shade of color or tone sacrificed. . . . Shaw had a wonderful ear, able to reproduce almost as many quirks of the English language as Shakespeare's. Shaw was in possession of a gift he wouldn't, or couldn't, give Eliza: he spoke in tongues.

It gives me a strange sensation to turn from Shaw's melancholy Pygmalion story to another, infinitely more hopeful version, written by the new president of the United States of America. Of course, his ear isn't half bad either. In Dreams from My Father, the new president displays an enviable facility for dialogue, and puts it to good use, animating a cast every bit as various as the one James Baldwin—an obvious influence—conjured for his own many-voiced novel Another Country. Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas, Kenyan elders, white Harvard nerds, black Columbia nerds, activist women, churchmen, security guards, bank tellers, and even a British man called Mr. Wilkerson. . . . This new president doesn't just speak for his people. He can speak them. It is a disorienting talent in a president; we're so unused to it. . . .

The conclusions Obama draws from his own Pygmalion experience, however, are subtler than Shaw's. The tale he tells is not the old tragedy of gaining a new, false voice at the expense of a true one. The tale he tells is all about addition. His is the story of a genuinely many-voiced man. If it has a moral it is that each man must be true to his selves, plural.

For Obama, having more than one voice in your ear is not a burden, or not solely a burden—it is also a gift. . . . [I]n the first chapter, [he discusses] the failure of his parents' relationship, characterized by their only son as the end of a dream. "Even as that spell was broken," he writes, "and the worlds that they thought they'd left behind reclaimed each of them, I occupied the place where their dreams had been."

To occupy a dream, to exist in a dreamed space (conjured by both father and mother), is surely a quite different thing from simply inheriting a dream. It's more interesting. What did Pauline Kael call Cary Grant? " The Man from Dream City." When Bristolian Archibald Leach became suave Cary Grant, the transformation happened in his voice, which he subjected to a strange, indefinable manipulation, resulting in that heavenly sui generis accent, neither west country nor posh, American nor English. It came from nowhere, he came from nowhere. Grant seemed the product of a collective dream, dreamed up by moviegoers in hard times, as it sometimes feels voters have dreamed up Obama in hard times. Both men have a strange reflective quality, typical of the self-created man—we see in them whatever we want to see. " Everyone wants to be Cary Grant," said Cary Grant. " Even I want to be Cary Grant." It's not hard to imagine Obama having that same thought, backstage at Grant Park, hearing his own name chanted by the hopeful multitude. Everyone wants to be Barack Obama. Even I want to be Barack Obama.

2.

But I haven't described Dream City. I'll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin—well, anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues. That's how you get from your mother to your father, from talking to one set of folks who think you're not black enough to another who figure you insufficiently white. It's the kind of town where the wise man says "I" cautiously, because "I" feels like too straight and singular a phoneme to represent the true multiplicity of his experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective pronoun "we."

Throughout his campaign Obama was careful always to say we. He was noticeably wary of "I." By speaking so, he wasn't simply avoiding a singularity he didn't feel, he was also drawing us in with him. He had the audacity to suggest that, even if you can't see it stamped on their faces, most people come from Dream City, too. Most of us have complicated back stories, messy histories, multiple narratives.

It was a high-wire strategy, for Obama, this invocation of our collective human messiness. His enemies latched on to its imprecision, emphasizing the exotic, un-American nature of Dream City, this ill-defined place where you could be from Hawaii and Kenya, Kansas and Indonesia all at the same time, where you could jive talk like a street hustler and orate like a senator. What kind of a crazy place is that? But they underestimated how many people come from Dream City, how many Americans, in their daily lives, conjure contrasting voices and seek a synthesis between disparate things. Turns out, Dream City wasn't so strange to them. . . .

Which brings us to the single-voiced Obamanation crowd. They rage on in the blogs and on the radio, waiting obsessively for the mask to slip. They have a great fear of what they see as Obama's doubling ways. "He says one thing but he means another"—this is the essence of the fear campaign. He says he's a capitalist, but he'll spread your wealth. He says he's a Christian, but really he's going to empower the Muslims. And so on and so forth. These are fears that have their roots in an anxiety about voice. Who is he? people kept asking. I mean, who is this guy, really?

3.

For reasons that are obscure to me, those qualities we cherish in our artists we condemn in our politicians. In our artists we look for the many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility. The apogee of this is, of course, Shakespeare: even more than for his wordplay we cherish him for his lack of allegiance. Our Shakespeare sees always both sides of a thing, he is black and white, male and female—he is everyman. The giant lacunae in his biography are merely a convenience; if any new facts of religious or political affiliation were ever to arise we would dismiss them in our hearts anyway. Was he, for example, a man of Rome or not? He has appeared, to generations of readers, not of one religion but of both, in truth, beyond both. Born into the middle of Britain's fierce Catholic–Protestant culture war, how could the bloody absurdity of those years not impress upon him a strong sense of cultural contingency? . . .

Shakespeare's art, the very medium of it, allowed him to do what civic officers and politicians can't seem to: speak simultaneous truths. (Is it not, for example, experientially true that one can both believe and not believe in God?) In his plays he is woman, man, black, white, believer, heretic, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim. He grew up in an atmosphere of equivocation, but he lived in freedom. And he offers us freedom: to pin him down to a single identity would be an obvious diminishment, both for Shakespeare and for us. Generations of critics have insisted on this irreducible multiplicity, though they have each expressed it different ways, through the glass of their times. Here is Keats's famous attempt, in 1817, to give this quality a name:

At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Smith then discusses the 19th-century English Historian Thomas Macaulay and his writings on the great statesman Halifax, whom he describes thus:

His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His polished, luminous, and animated eloquence...was the delight of the House of Lords.... His political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary merit.

In fact, Halifax is familiar—he sounds like the man from Dream City. This makes Macaulay's caveat the more striking:

Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.

To me, this is a doleful conclusion. It is exactly men with such intellectual peculiarities that I have always hoped to see in politics. But maybe Macaulay is correct: maybe the Halifaxes of this world make, in the end, better writers than politicians. A lot rests on how this president turns out—but that's a debate for the future. Here I want instead to hazard a little theory, concerning the evolution of a certain type of voice, typified by Halifax, by Shakespeare, and very possibly the President. For the voice of what Macaulay called "the philosophic historian" is, to my mind, a valuable and particular one, and I think someone should make a proper study of it. It's a voice that develops in a man over time; my little theory sketches four developmental stages.

The first stage in the evolution is contingent and cannot be contrived. In this first stage, the voice, by no fault of its own, finds itself trapped between two poles, two competing belief systems. And so this first stage necessitates the second: the voice learns to be flexible between these two fixed points, even to the point of equivocation. Then the third stage: this native flexibility leads to a sense of being able to "see a thing from both sides." And then the final stage, which I think of as the mark of a certain kind of genius: the voice relinquishes ownership of itself, develops a creative sense of disassociation in which the claims that are particular to it seem no stronger than anyone else's. There it is, my little theory—I'd rather call it a story. It is a story about a wonderful voice, occasionally used by citizens, rarely by men of power. Amidst the din of the 2008 culture wars it proved especially hard to hear.

In this lecture I have been seeking to tentatively suggest that the voice that speaks with such freedom, thus unburdened by dogma and personal bias, thus flooded with empathy, might make a good president. It's only now that I realize that in all this utilitarianism I've left joyfulness out of the account, and thus neglected a key constituency of my own people, the poets! Being many-voiced may be a complicated gift for a president, but in poets it is a pure delight in need of neither defense nor explanation. Plato banished them from his uptight and annoying republic so long ago that they have lost all their anxiety. They are fancy-free.

"I am a Hittite in love with a horse," writes Frank O'Hara.

I don't know what blood's
in me I feel like an African prince I am a girl walking downstairs
in a red pleated dress with heels I am a champion taking a fall
I am a jockey with a sprained ass-hole I am the light mist
in which a face appears
and it is another face of blonde I am a baboon eating a banana
I am a dictator looking at his wife I am a doctor eating a child
and the child's mother smiling I am a Chinaman climbing a mountain
I am a child smelling his father's underwear I am an Indian
sleeping on a scalp
and my pony is stamping in
the birches,
and I've just caught sight of the
Niña, the Pinta and the Santa
Maria.
What land is this, so free?

Frank O'Hara's republic is of the imagination, of course. It is the only land of perfect freedom. Presidents, as a breed, tend to dismiss this land, thinking it has nothing to teach them. If this new president turns out to be different, then writers will count their blessings, but with or without a president on board, writers should always count their blessings. A line of O'Hara's reminds us of this. It's carved on his gravestone. It reads: "Grace to be born and live as variously as possible."

But to live variously cannot simply be a gift, endowed by an accident of birth; it has to be a continual effort, continually renewed. . . .

It's my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture. I further audaciously hope that such a man will not mistake the happy accident of his own cultural sensibilities for a set of natural laws, suitable for general application. I even hope that he will find himself in agreement with George Bernard Shaw when he declared, "Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it." But that may be an audacious hope too far. We'll see if Obama's lifelong vocal flexibility will enable him to say proudly with one voice "I love my country" while saying with another voice "It is a country, like other countries." I hope so. He seems just the man to demonstrate that between those two voices there exists no contradiction and no equivocation but rather a proper and decent human harmony.

Blonde Venus

I do love the internet.

Marlene Dietrich singing "Hot Voodoo" in Blonde Venus (1932). Directed by Josef von Sternberg. With a young Cary Grant. How cool and bizarre Hollywood was at times before the Hays Code.

5 + 5 Movie Meme

This meme arrives via Crystal. The idea is to choose your 5 Favorite Films and 5 Guilty Pleasures.

As I wrote on Crystal's blog, I'm not really comfortable with the idea of "Guilty Pleasures," as I think the concept promotes a false dichotomy between low art and high art. As one who loves musicals, screwball comedies, Astaire-Rogers films, etc., I don't think they're lesser films than favorites by Bergman, Godard, Kurosawa, etc. If I like a film, I like a film, and I don't feel guilty about it. Singin' in the Rain is a great film, period. I don't think it's better or worse than Rashomon, just different.

But having given my little cinema sermon, I'll play along. I offer 5 Favorites and 5 films that some people might feel guilty about enjoying.

Five Favorites:

Ran [Chaos] (1985) - I have a lot of favorite films, but this is the one I would probably want to take with me to a desert island. Akira Kurosawa does King Lear. It's an epic film that has everything: a great story by Shakespeare; adapted brilliantly to a medieval Samurai setting; stunning cinematography; lots of action, including some of the greatest battle sequences ever filmed; political intrigue; romance; family drama; a bit of comedy; and that elusive quality that all great art has, a kind of deep humanity that pierces both the heart and mind. It captures the horror and the beauty of life, the grandness of our existence, as well as the fact that we are but grains of sand. It deserves to be seen on a big screen, as Kurosawa's visuals are even more stunning than usual.


To Have and Have Not (1944) - My Bogart choice. Yeah, Casablanca is a better film, and if you ask me tomorrow, I'd probably include it instead. (The day after that, I might go with The Maltese Falcon, which seems more and more like a perfect film each time I see it.) So why pick a film that was a blatant attempt to repeat the success of Casablanca, that was based on one of Hemingway's most mediocre works, and that didn't have Ingrid Bergman? Easy: Lauren Bacall. She was 19 going on 35, and Bogart fell for her hard. And it's written all over the film. The two of them completely and utterly out-smolder the almost virginal relationship between Bogey and Bergman in Casablanca. Was there ever a more seductive, radiant and sexy woman than Bacall in To Have and Have Not? Bogey didn't think so. It's marvelous watching the two of them circle around each other in the film, just as they were doing in real life. Their banter ranks among some of the best in film history.

You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.

In addition to the Bogart and Bacall sizzle, To Have and Have Not also offers a screenplay by William Faulkner (and Jules Furman), excellent direction by the great Howard Hawks, an exotic setting, and wonderful performances by Walter Brennan (winner of 3 Academy Awards in his career) and singer-songwriter Hoagy Charmichael. I always come away from this one very satisfied.


Holiday (1938) - While Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story are the more famous Cary Grant-Katherine Hepburn films, and I love them both, I've always had a soft spot for this one. Underneath the wonderful comedy, the stylish elegance, and the sheer exuberance of Grant and Hepburn, Holiday has a real poignancy and a touch of sadness about life. How do we want to live our lives? What's really important? What is real love? The screenplay by Philip Barry, who also wrote Philadelphia Story, is simply one of the best ever written, covering so much ground so smartly and gracefully.

Stephanie Zacharek has a great review of Holiday at Salon.com.


La dolce vita (1960) - Hard to choose between this and Fellini's 8½. Both have Marcello Mastroiani. I saw La dolce vita more recently, so I lean in its direction. From the opening shot of a helicopter carrying a statue of Christ across Rome to the final powerful sequence on the beach, Fellini spins a delightfully twisted moral tale. There are so many classic and brilliant scenes, such as Marcello and Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain. And Fellini's visual sensibility may be the greatest in cinema history. But Marcello gives the film its resonance, with a great portrayal of a journalist slowly losing his soul.


Swing Time (1936) - Astaire & Rogers. I can never decide between this and Top Hat as my favorite Fred & Ginger movie. Besides offering some of the greatest dancing ever seen on film, Swing Time also features great music by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, including "The Way You Look Tonight;" a witty screenplay; and Fred Astaire's underrated and excellent comic timing. Directed by George Stevens, who could deliver terrific comedies like Woman of the Year and Talk of the Town, as well as classic dramas such as Shane and Giant.

In Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen tries to think of what makes this seemingly meaningless life worth living, and he finally settles on the Marx Brothers. Not a bad choice. That's how I feel about Fred Astaire. Swing Time helps keep me sane and deal with the existential black hole that always threatens to engulf me. That's why I would never call it a guilty pleasure!!! It's far too important.


Five Guilty Pleasures

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - The film I've seen more than any other - I lost count at 37 times. And most of those were in the days before home video! When The Holy Grail came out in the 1970s, my friends and I had never seen anything like it. I mean, even the opening credits were hilarious. I saw the movie six times on its first release, and, after that, my friends and I waited eagerly for it to show up as a midnight movie every few months. After all these years, I still think it's brilliant. And having studied the Arturian Cycle a bit in college, I came to realize how incredibly intelligent these Oxford boys really were. If I didn't take Ran with me to a desert island, I might take this.

Et Dieu... créa la femme [And God. . . Created Woman] (1956) - Okay, this is as close as I get to a real "guilty" pleasure. I told myself that director Roger Vadim played a role in the development of the Nouvelle Vague, which is true. I told myself the film had a huge impact when it came out, helping to bring international films to an American audience, which is also true. I told myself it was important to watch the film in terms of overall cinema history, which isn't really a lie. So, there.

But, yes, I admit that Brigitte Bardot did have something to do with my watching this. Or everything to do with it.

By the way, it's actually a good film, and Bardot gives a great performance.

French Kiss (1995) - One of my favorite comedies. Kevin Kline is hilarious as a French thief. Meg Ryan does her Meg Ryan thing, though maybe better than ever. Jean Reno's a cop. Timothy Hutton is Meg's fiancee, who goes to Paris and falls in love with a French "god-dessssss." Meg is terrified of flying and hates the French, but she wants Hutton back, so she puts herself through hell. Don't know why it didn't do better when it came out. The writing is wonderful and very well-crafted, with a lot of attention to details. The soundtrack is great, with Charles Trenet's beautiful song "Verlaine," and many other French tunes, as well as one cut by Paolo Conte.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban (2004) - Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also did the recent Children of Men, as well as Y Tu Mama Tambien. I've probably seen this five or six times now, and I appreciate Cuarón's craftsmanship more and more with each viewing. He doesn't like CGI, which I don't either, so his special effects feel different than those in other big Hollywood movies. Filmed up in Scotland, it has a wonderfully brooding atmosphere. The story is one of the best of the Potter series, and includes several surprises. The cast is a Who's Who of British actors, including Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman, Julie Christie, David Thewlis, Maggie Smith and Robbie Coltrane. And, of course, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry.

Quick Change (1990) - The funniest movie ever made about New York City. This underrated comedy classic was co-directed by Bill Murray, who also gives one of his best performances. He plays Grimm, a City Planner who's grown to hate the Big Apple and plans a bank heist so he can get out of the city and start over. The robbery goes fine - it's getting to JFK airport that turns out to be the real challenge. The great cast includes Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, Jason Robards, Tony Shaloub, Stanley Tucci and Phil Hartman. I'm not sure how this would play for those who haven't lived in New York, but if you're ever struggled to get to JFK on time to catch your flight (Liam!), you'll probably find this dead on.