The top 100 films that lit up my life at various moments

Just a place to capture films that took my breath away...films for the ages...send your suggestions on the greatest films on your list!

• This is England--if your dad is killed in Maggie Thatcher's Falkland Island silliness, and the only replacement you can find is a group of skinheads, you need to grow up very very fast.   Beautiful coming of age story...and the best slow-mo gangster walk this side of John Travolta.
• Away from Her--what it means to be forgotten...and then rejected.  I hated Tom Wilkerson for months after seeing this...not that he'll remember...
• The Last Waltz--songs of our lives.   Worth it to see Robbie Robertson, not to mention a blotto Neil Young trying to grope Joni Mitchell...
• Days of Heaven--Terrance Malick directs Richard Gere, Brook Adams, and Sam Shepard==and don't forget the voiceover and Leo Kottke soundtrack.   Beauty makes you healthy...
• Breaker Morant--Australian infantry officers take the fall for British colonial malfeasance--with beauty, honor, and heroism.  
• Last Night--no, not the 2010 film with Keira Knightly.  The 1998 Canadian one with every great Canadian actor. The world is ending at midnight, and the Toronto gas company is trying to keep the fuel flowing til the end. Will the local easy listening radio station get to the end of its "Top 500 Hits of All Time" list?  And how will very young versions of Sandra Oh, Sarah Polley, Don McKellor (who wrote and directed, too), Arsenie Khanjian, and even Genevieve Bujold as the ultimate sexy high school teacher, react? One family decides it's Christmas Eve every night. Another makes a suicide pact.  And another couple puts down their handguns and engages in the most powerful end-of-film kiss ever. 
• The Graduate--maybe there's a pattern here about great movies having great soundtracks.  The word "plastics" was never the same after this.   Nor was seducing an older woman or loving her daughter, even if she is Katherine Ross...where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio...
• The Deer Hunter--Meryl drips wine on her wedding gown and things really go badly after that. The greatest anti-war film to come out of the idiocy of the Viet Nam era.
• The Usual Suspects--what a cast, and the model for all the cross/double cross/triple cross films that have followed.   We all love Keyser Soze...
• Kitchen Stories--would make a perfect double feature with Thelma & Louise--the quirkiest male buddy film ever, as intimate as your old familiar appliances.
• Nashville--Lily Tomlin tries to keep true in the midst of the end of the golden era of America--Altman's never drops his wry smile as he (and of course Geraldine Chaplin as the BBC journalist sent to make sense of our culture) sorts through our trash.   Keith Carradine is a sex addict ("I'm Easy"), Ned Beatty is sweating to recruit strippers for a Replacement Party fundraiser.   Every one wrote their own songs for this and they're both fantastic and condemning.  
• Trainspotting--I've never stopped loving Danny Boyle and Ewen Macgregor since.  T2 didn't come close to the first, though worthwhile too.
• The Guard--Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle--wow. 
• Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
• Thelma and Louise--the only sad thing about this greatest-of-all road movies smash is that Ridley Scott never did better.   But Gena, Susan, Brad and Harvey?   OMG.   Thelma:   "I've got a knack for this shit."  Or Brad Pitt's rear-view mirror jig?   The movie runs on all 8 cylinders from start to transcendent and oft-cited conclusion.
• Of Gods and Men (2010, French)--as beautiful as they come,  a film showing the ritual lives of the Trappist monks of Tibherene who were assassinated after they jointly decided not to flee the escalating Muslim violence around the Algerian Civil War in 1996.   Never a better film about courage.
• The Hunt--Mads Mickkelson plays a kindergarten teacher wrongly accused of molseting his student.   His town turns on him...as we all would. 
• Four Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days--won top film honors for Christian Muniu of Romania in 2007.    This shows how much emotion you can capture on film if you only leave the camera on.
• Breaking the Waves--Lars von Trier's best (though watching him eat a formal meal in Delhi in the Five Obstructions is a must, too).  Probably cried harder at the fate of Emily Watson than at any film in my life.   Hypnotic.
• Brothers--what happens when the good brother goes missing in Afghanistan, and the bad brother takes over the family.   Only the good brother shows up again.   Remade in the US with Jake Gyllenhaal, the Scandi version is deeper.
• Elling--the Swedes take care of their own--even the neurotic ones.   What a society that cares might look like.
• The Real Trotsky (Canadian)--Quebecois teen takes over East Montreal High, believing that he's starting the real revolution.   He's not--but in fact he does.   The fact that he ends up in London Ontario is a testament to what a hero he is!
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Celebration--the worst family reunion ever.   I mean ever.  
• The King of Devil's Island
• Little Big Man--western expansion told from the point of view of those who got stepped on--all played by Dustin Hoffman.   Despite all the mud and death and violence and racism, amazingly, it is still NOT a good day to die. 
• The Artist--Academy Award winner--a rarity--about what happens when you've been passed by.
• Ship of Fools--we're all on it.   You'll see yourself on the passenger list.  
• Sweet Hereafter--Atom Egoyan makes tender memories of youth into epics...in this case the school bus ride that changes every one's life for ever.   
• Far From Heaven--Todd Hayne's 2002 entry which starts in suburbia and ends up with gender and race awareness
• The Ice Storm--Ang Lee turns a key party into a horror story...can you imagine anything worse that spouse-swapping?   Yuck.  How much we've lost, this film shows us.
• Brokeback Mountain--OK, if we're doing Ang Lee, let's continue...maybe not the Hulk, but all his films deal with lost identity...beautifully.
• Force Majeure--Are men supposed to protect their families?  What happens if they don't do the job as well as expected?  Can love survive?  Ruben Ostlund is a world-class director.
• The Savages--shows what you can do with a dying patriarch story in the hands of great actors.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman at his absolute best, and Laura Linney matching him step for step.   Wow, the sparks fly.
• Rabbitproof Fence--how far would you go to avoid being cross-mated with a white boy?  Heroically, the answer turns out to be over 1800 kilometers.   Perhaps the greatest escape film of all time--the heroine beats out Steve McQueen on his motorcycle, for my money (not that Steve wasn't amazing).
• City of Men--not sure which Cuirzon film I like the best...Y tu tambien? Amores Peros?  Roma was great in 2018 too.
• White Dog--humans don't rule the planet, and we wreck unfathomable pain and damage on our co-inhabitants.   For a very short triumphant moment, these Hungarian dogs fight back and win.   If you're cruel to animals, you're cruel to all of us.   Stop.
• Eastern Promises
• Trance (2013)--this Danny Boyle film wasn't universally loved but I did...super stylish Vicent Cassel and Rosario Dawson struggle around an art thief who gets hit on the head and forgets where he hid the loot.
• Lost in Translation--Scarlett Johannson, Bill Murray, and Giovani Ribisi capture the loneliness at the center of the human condition in a Sofia Coppola way that's never been equalled.
• Matrix (1996)--we didn't have many cell phones, computers had cursors, and the police put down rebellions.  This film got everything right for the age of Trump and beyond. And, it's full of film lovers' tricks with the camera--when you turn off the program, Samuel Jackson and Keanu Reaves are left in empty white. 

Other Noteworthy fun films

• Hawaii, Oslo
• Seducing Doctor Lewis
• Green Thumb
• Purple Rain (for Prince's music--and because Appolonia has so little talent)
• Touchy Feely--the 2013 film directed by Lynn Shelton (who died suddenly mid 2020 after having done knockout films like Hump Day)stars Rosemarie DeWitt as a massage therapist who develops a phobia to touching skin. Also great Allison Janney and Ellen Page.
• La Haine ("Hate)--classic 1995  French film by Matthieu Kassovitz, with a young Vincent Cassal--took all of us to the banlieues before we knew what they were...everyone hates everyone and every chance encounter has the potential to explode.