In the "How Cool is This?" department, the folks at Facets Multimedia recently invited me to join the ranks of their "Celebrity Favorites" where they are collecting the Top Ten Favorite lists of various filmmakers and critics. My lists, composed of 10½ films and another 10½ horror films (one short added to each list), is now posted here, and I get a kick out of seeing my choices sandwiched somewhere between those of Jerry Lewis and Guy Maddin.
If you bother to follow the link, you'll see that some of my main selections have changed since the list I provided for the SIGHT & SOUND Top Ten Poll of 2002. The reason for this is that I, perhaps naïvely, used greatness as a criteria for my S&S poll choices; as it turned out from the choices of the other participants, this wasn't necessary part of the plan, but it was the way I chose to meet the challenge of concocting a list. With my Facets lists, I took the word "Favorites" to heart and tried to pick and choose from a somewhat longer list of movies I love, while adding in a title or three purely for provocation purposes -- not the provocation of readers, but the provocation of DVD companies that might not otherwise consider a deluxe disc of Franju's JUDEX or Willard Huyck's MESSIAH OF EVIL (widescreen! and in proper Technicolor!) worth doing.
I freely admit that there are greater films that exist than are found on either of my lists, but these are the titles that push my specific buttons and that's all that counts. It's two lists of movies, yes, but more particularly a core sampling of me. I don't regret any of the choices I made, only that I couldn't make more of them. There is something wrong about any Top Ten film list that doesn't include Welles, Lang, Bunuel or Hitchcock (oh, that's right, I did pick one of his), and there is something just as askew when a Top Ten list of mine doesn't include some of the movies to which I'm known to be addicted (HATARI!, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?, WOODSTOCK, TOMMY, LOCAL HERO, LOST IN TRANSLATION, THAT THING YOU DO!) or anything by Feuillade, Starewitch, Zeman, Ptushko, Corman, Fisher or Zulawski, not to mention the director I've often cited as my favorite: Eric Rohmer. (PERCEVAL got bumped from my Top Ten because I've only seen it once and feel trepidation about seeing it a second time; if I had to pick a favorite Rohmer today, it would probably be THE GREEN RAY aka SUMMER, which happened to slip my mind on "Make Your List" day.)
But a list of favorite movies can't really be anything more than a snapshot of how you felt about those films at the moment you were asked to provide the list -- unless you're cursed to be one of those mudturtle-minded critics who take pride in never watching any film a second time nor giving any a second thought after they've turned in their review. With that thought in mind, I hope you'll be moved to check out the lists -- all of 'em, not just mine (Joe Dante contributed one, too) -- and perhaps be inspired to familiarize yourself with those titles, if any, still awaiting your discovery.
In my ongoing effort to make my latest Top Ten list out-of-date, I saw a long-postponed pleasure -- Marcel Carné's CHILDREN OF PARADISE [Les Enfants du Paradis, 1945] -- today for the first time; the first half this morning, the second half this evening. I loved every minute of it, but -- forgive my ignorance of the extant literature about the film -- am I the first viewer who was left asking, "So where is Part Three?"
