11-20 films, those who didn't make the cut.

[Cal Alamein]

To those who struggled w/ a mere top-10 films, feel free to give us your 11-20, or more.


Kenny & Company
Once Upon A Time in the West
Battleship Potemkin
Battle of Algiers
Night of the Living Dead
Medium Cool
Billy Liar
Stroszek
This is Spinal Tap
A Nous La Liberte

[San Bernardhinault]

Spinal Tap
Lebowski
Jackie Brown
Amelie
The Martian
Life of Brian
Brazil
Galaxy Quest
Taxi Driver
The Untouchables

[elguapo4]

Goodfellas
Downfall
A Matter of life and death
The Terminator
Casablanca
Saving Private Ryan
The Wicker Man (1973)
A Night at the Opera
Kind Hearts and Coronets
A Shot in the Dark

[ad hoc]

Duck soup
Goodbye Lenin
Raging Bull
Vertigo
Dr Strangelove
2001
For a few dollars more
4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days
Kontrol
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Chase
The Godfather
Weekend
Chinatown
The Tenant
M
Vivre sa Vie
Céline and Julie Go Boating
Betty Boop's Snow White
Brewster McCloud

[delicatemoth]

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days

Oh I forgot that, absolutely brilliant film.

Gonna cut loose a bit here, these aren't really 11-20 but another ten films I think are great if maybe flawed in some ways.

Flash Gordon
Scorpio Rising
Frenzy
Witchfinder General
O Lucky Man
Atanarjuat The Fast Runner
Pan's Labyrinth
Histoires Du Cinema
M
Viridiana

[Amor de Cosmos]

Flash Gordon

Which one? The Buster Crabbe serial, or the Max von Sideburns feature?

[caja-dglh]

I struggle with making a top-10 because I struggle to think of ten films. I guess this doesn't apply to me.

[Sean of the Shed]

Unbreakable
Pan's Labyrinth
Logan
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit
Thor Ragnarok
Kickass
Joker
Jurassic Park
Almost Famous
The Shawshank Redemption

[Snake Plissken]

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Akira
The Taking of Pelham 123*
The Princess Bride
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
This Is Spinal Tap
Mad Max: Fury Road
Airplane!
12 Angry Men
Sleuth (1972)


* Just beating out The French Connection in the subcategory of "Grimy thrillers set in 1970's New York"

[Jah Womble]

(Yep, I picked a few of those as well...)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Taking of Pelham 123 (original)
Marathon Man
Rollerball
This is Spinal Tap
Secrets and Lies
Swingers
Festen
Do the Right Thing
Mulholland Drive

[delicatemoth]

Which one? The Buster Crabbe serial, or the Max von Sideburns feature?

The one with the Queen album. Greatest movie theme ever!

[Jah Womble]

Now rendered completely intolerable by a cleaning product ad. (You can probably guess which one.)

[Nocturnal Submission]

Oh, go on then:


The Incredibles
Finding Nemo
Up
High Anxiety
Young Frankenstein
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Jurassic Park
LA Confidential
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
633 Squadron

[colchestersid]

Every Saturday evening my son and I sit down to watch a movie together - if it's his choice he'll find something animated on Disney or Netflix - if my turn, I'll go for something I think he'll enjoy

Apart from some misfires on my part (Jurassic Park is much gorier than I remembered - Big is a lovely film but he was too young to enjoy/understand - The Princess Bride has not aged well - the Star Wars prequels so unwatchably awful that we bailed on the second one) we've done pretty well

After 61 films watched together so far, here are his favourites (so I'll put them here as my 11-20 choices)

The Iron Giant
ET
Klaus
Star Wars
Elf
Monsters Inc
Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse
Back to the Future
Zootropolis
Miracle on 34th Street (original version)

[Fussbudget]

Something like:

The 39 Steps (Hitchcock one obvs.)
A Matter of Life and Death
Singin' in the Rain
Designing Woman
Barry Lyndon
Assault on Precinct 13
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 one)
Memento
28 Days Later
Hidden

Decided not to include anything from the last 10 years in the end, let's see how I feel about them in ten years' time. Also not sure why I have such a blind spot for 90s films, I like a lot of them but other than Jurassic Park and maybe Trainspotting at a push none of them come anywhere close to the top 20

The Shining is a funny one in that it should be a shoo-in but it's been quoted and memed and turned into so much merch that it's soured how I feel about it a little even though it's brilliant. I probably just need to rewatch it and I'll love it again

[Incandenza]

I found this harder than my top 10, and I went over ten films.

Casablanca
Touch of Evil
Psycho
My Neighbor Totoro
Apocalypse Now
Trouble in Paradise
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Pierrot Le Fou
The Vanishing
Chungking Express
Cinema Paradiso
Blazing Saddles
Jaws
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
This Is Spinal Tap
The Big Lebowski

[Benjm]

Build My Gallows High (aka Out Of The Past)
Brighton Rock
The Magnificent Seven
The Medusa Touch
Working Girl
Midnight Run
Goodfellas
Kingpin
Grosse Pointe Blank
The Love Witch

Fairly arbitrary but I've seen them all multiple times and broadly know why I like them.

[hobbes]

Close Encounters
Star Wars
Norwegian Wood
Ghostbusters
Hero
Blade
Back to the Future
Die Hard
Man Bites Dog
Menace II Society

[diggedy derek]

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie
Pather Panchali
Andrei Rublev
High Noon
The Third Man
Do The Right Thing
The Big Sleep
Imitation Of Life
On Dangerous Ground
Beyond A Reasonable Doubt

A bit more Hollywood this time, but there's still a fair few that it feels sad to leave out, like Moana, Singin' In The Rain, the whole Toy Story trilogy, that feel a very big part of my film life.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Taxi Driver
Bicycle Thieves
Big Lebowski
Battle of Algiers
Brazil
La Règle du jeu
Hiroshima mon amour
Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Hidden
Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner

[treibeis]

Man Bites Dog

Shit, I'd forgotten all about that. Crazy Love as well.

Sick bastards, Belgian film-makers.

[blameless]

Star Wars
Good Bye Lenin
The Godfather Part 2
Midnight Run
Back To the Future
Once Upon a Time In America
Blazing Saddles
Lantana
City Of God
Mississippi Burning

[Felicity, I guess so]

Forgot Blade Runner...

[jameswba]

I also found this hard, and don't really feel inclined to write out the titles of 30-40 films. But here's a list anyway :

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Easy Rider
Sense and Sensibility
Blade Runner
In the Bedroom
To Kill a Mockingbird
Secrets and Lies
ET
Little Women (the most recent one)
Čiara (The Line)*

I automatically based my original top ten on films that, for whatever reason, still resonate with me, or were a powerful emotional experience to watch. This list (with one exception) is more about enjoyment, about films I could enjoy watching again and again.

*I have a slightly unsatisfactory relationship with Slovak and Czech films. Many of the best ones get repeated airings at holiday times and some I've only seen with groups of people who know the best lines by heart, or are laughing before the funny moments actually occur. It's not the best way to form one's own judgements about a film. The ones I appreciate most tend to be those I first saw in a cinema, either alone or with someone equally keen enough to leave the house to see it. Sadly, there aren't enough cinema retrospectives of old Slovak/Czech classics.

Slovak cinema went through an interesting little phase pre-Covid where a few films were made which reckoned with the country's sinister post-independence mid-90s era. An interesting one was Únos (Kidnap), based on the kidnap (and its violent aftermath) of the president's son by people linked to the Slovak Secret Service. Even better was Čiara, about the people involved with the smuggling of contraband cigarettes across the Slovakia-Ukraine border pre-Schengen.

But neither are quite in the same league as the one Slovak film that made my top ten, The Shop on Main Street. This is set in earlier, even darker times, but is a truly beautiful piece of work.