Top 100 Favorite Movies

             It's taken years, but I finally managed to complete posts for each title on my unofficial list of 100 favorite movies. These are my favorites, not what I'd consider the best films of all time. The list leans heavily towards Hollywood classics from the 1930s-1960s, but there are a few foreign and post-1970 outliers. There is definitely a repetitive feel to many of the posts as, in order to get through these and due to my less-than-spectacular writing skills, I used an essay-type format for most of the titles, consisting of an overview of the film, usually followed by focus on the director's work, then a breakdown of the performers, ending with a wrap-up paragraph discussing the initial public and critical reaction to the movie, along with its awards and legacy. Here is the rundown in order of preference (although if I had to stop at, say, 50 titles and couldn't take all 100 to that desert island, I might have to move some movies around), with links to the actual posts (a few films are mentioned in more than one post):

1) The Wizard of Oz (1939)

2) Psycho (1960)

3) All About Eve (1950)

4) The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

5) The Heiress (1949) and here

6) Singin' in the Rain (1952)

7) The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

8) The Lady Eve (1941)

9) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

10) Gone with the Wind (1939)

11) Nights of Cabiria (1957)

12) Laura (1944)

13) Written on the Wind (1956)

14) The Night of the Hunter (1955)

15) The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

16) Love Me Tonight (1932)

17) Dumbo (1941)

18) Double Indemnity (1944)

19) A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

20) The Tarnished Angels (1957)

21) Leave Her to Heaven (1945) 

22) From Here to Eternity (1953)

23) Lolita (1962)

24) Tootsie (1982)

25) The Rocking Horse Winner (1949)

26) Nashville (1975)

27) You Can Count on Me (2000)

28) Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

29) Vertigo (1958)

30) Midnight (1939)

31) Duck Soup (1933)

32) Tiger Bay (1959)

33) Sunset Boulevard (1950)

34) Strangers on a Train (1951)

35) The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

36) The Member of the Wedding (1952)

37) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

38) Casablanca (1942)

39) National Velvet (1944)

40)  8 1/2 (1963)

41) Duel in the Sun (1946)

42) Peter Pan (1953)

43) Imitation of Life (1959)

44) The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

45) Rebecca (1940)

46) The Awful Truth (1937)

47) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

48) The Apartment (1960)

49) North By Northwest (1959)

50) The Navigator (1924)

51) Rear Window (1954)

52) It Happened One Night (1934)

53) Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

54) Friendly Persuasion (1956)

55) L'Avventura (1960)

56) Oliver! (1968) and here

57) Hud (1963)

58) Roman Holiday (1953)

59) Young Frankenstein (1974)

60) The African Queen (1951)

61) The Innocents (1961)

62) The Yearling (1946)

63) Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

64) Nightmare Alley (1947)

65) Black Narcissus (1947)

66) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

67) Stalag 17 (1953)

68) The Band Wagon (1953)

69) A Summer Place (1959)

70) Charade (1963)

71) The Maltese Falcon (1941)

72) Splendor in the Grass (1961)

73) Dead of Night (1945) and here

74) Lord Love a Duck (1966)

75) Airplane! (1980)

76) The Hustler (1961)

77) Ace in the Hole (1951)

78) The Ten Commandments (1956)

79) Central Station (1998)

80) These Three (1936)

81) Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

82) Dodsworth (1936)

83) Peyton Place (1957)

84) The Rainmaker (1956)

85) Funny Girl (1968)

86) City Lights (1931)

87) The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

88) Mulholland Drive (2001)

89) Children of Paradise (1945)

90) Intruder in the Dust (1949)

91) Some Like It Hot (1959)

92) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

93) House of Wax (1953) and here

94) Forbidden Planet (1956)

95) Pillow Talk (1959)

96) The Time Machine (1960)

97) The Nutty Professor (1963)

98) Tom Jones (1963)

99) A Hard Day's Night (1964)

100) 12 Angry Men (1957)

Other (mainly classic) movies I've written about on the blog (by year):

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 & 1941)

I'm No Angel (1933)

Of Human Bondage (1934)

The Thin Man (1934)

Camille (1936)

Jesse James (1939)

The Old Maid (1939)

The Women (1939)

The Letter (1940)

Remember the Night (1940)

Kings Row (1942)

Mrs. Miniver (1942)

Stormy Weather (1943)

Cobra Woman (1944)

Mr. Skeffington (1944)

The Uninvited (1944)

Fallen Angel (1945)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Mother Wore Tights (1947)

Act of Violence (1948)

Beyond the Forest (1949)

Holiday Affair (1949)

White Heat (1949)

Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

Caged (1950)

Storm Warning (1950)

The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)

Detective Story (1951)

Outcast of the Islands (1951)

A Place in the Sun (1951)

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Son of Paleface (1952)

Stars and Stripes Forever (1952)

Kiss Me Kate (1953)

Lili (1953)

Robot Monster (1953)

The Long, Long Trailer (1954)

Woman's World (1954)

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Picnic (1955)

The Tender Trap (1955) and here

To Catch a Thief (1955)

The Bad Seed (1956)

Bigger Than Life (1956)

The Man on the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)

That Certain Feeling (1956)

Trapeze (1956)

War and Peace (1956)

Edge of the City (1957)

Island in the Sun (1957)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

The Buccaneer (1958)

Gigi (1958)

King Creole (1958)

Some Came Running (1958)

Compulsion (1959)

Gidget (1959)

The Nun's Story (1959)

BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Elmer Gantry (1960)

West Side Story (1961)

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Lilies of the Field (1963)

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Pretty Poison (1968)

Skidoo (1968)

Paper Moon (1973)

Jaws (1975)

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Mommie Dearest (1981)

For Your Consideration (2006)

Into the Wild (2007)

A Christmas Tale (2008)

The Wrestler (2008)

An Education (2009)