My 100 Favourite Movies

Inspired by Crystal, who was herself inspired by someone else, I decided to make a list of my 100 favourite movies.

It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I tried to write them roughly in order of how much I like them, but that became somewhat unwieldy, so after the top ten they are listed in alphabetical order.

There is a disproportionate number of films from the past ten years. I suppose I remember recent movies better. If I gave it a few more days I could replace half with completely different titles.

Here's my Top Ten:

L'avventura (1960, Michaelangelo Antonioni)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Age of Innocence (1993, Martin Scorsese)
Le passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Eng: The Passion of Joan of Arc; 1928, Carl Dreyer)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)
The Godfather, Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
La dolce vita (1960, Federico Fellini)
Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

The next ninety, in alphabetical order:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
À la folie... pas du tout (Eng: He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not; 2002, Laetitia Columbani)
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, Adam McKay)
Annie Hall (1977, Woody Allen)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, Jay Roach)
Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan)
Beautiful Girls (1996, Ted Demme)
The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks)
The Bourne Identity (2002, Doug Liman)
The Bourne Supremacy (2004, Paul Greengrass)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, Paul Greengrass)
Braveheart (1995, Mel Gibson)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
Casino Royale (2006, Martin Campbell)
Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)
Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Constant Gardener (2005, Fernando Meirelles)
The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Corporation (2003, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)
Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas)
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
Dead Man Walking (1995, Tim Robbins)
El maquinista (Eng: The Machinist; 2004, Brad Anderson)
Elizabeth (1998, Shekhar Kapur)
The English Patient (1995, Anthony Minghella)
Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanley Kubrick)
Fight Club (1999, David Fincher)
Forrest Gump (1994, Robert Zemeckis)
The Fugitive (1993, Andrew Davis)
Fucking Åmål (Eng: Show Me Love; 1998, Lukas Moodysson)
Ghostbusters (1984, Ivan Reitman)
The Godfather, Part III (1990, Francis Ford Coppola)
Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman)
Hamlet (1997, Kenneth Branagh)
Jackie Brown (1997, Quentin Tarantino)
JFK (1992, Oliver Stone)
Juno (2007, Jason Reitman)
Kundun (1997, Martin Scorsese)
Kung Fu Panda (2008, Mark Osborne and John Stevenson)
La règle du jeu (Eng: Rules of the Game; 1939, Jean Renoir)
Ladri di biciclette (Eng: The Bicycle Thief; 1948, Vittorio De Sica)
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Eng: Amélie; 2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995, Mike Figgis)
Léolo (1992, Jean-Claude Lauzon)
Les quatre cents coups (Eng: The 400 Blows; 1959, François Truffaut)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Wes Anderson)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006, Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
Lost in Translation (2003, Sophia Coppola)
Malèna (2002, Giuseppe Tornatore)
Meet the Parents (2000, Jay Roach)
Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)
Minority Report (2002, Steven Spielberg)
Monsters, Inc. (2001, Pete Docter and David Silverman)
Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone)
Once (2007, John Carney)
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
Ratatouille (2007, Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava)
Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Rock (1996, Michael Bay)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg)
Schindler's List (1993, Steven Spielberg)
Serenity (2005, Joss Whedon)
The Shawshank Redemption (1995, Frank Darabont)
The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008, Danny Boyle)
Spartan (2004, David Mamet)
Spider-Man 2 (2004, Sam Raimi)
The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)
Star Trek (2009, J.J. Abrams)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982, Nicholas Meyer)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Richard Marquand)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1984, Irvin Kirshner)
The Sweet Hereafter (1997, Atom Egoyan)
Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, Anthony Minghella)
Taxi Driver (1974, Martin Scorsese)
Touch of Evil (Restored to Orson Welles' Vision) (1958, Orson Welles)
Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter)
Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Eng: Three Colours: Red; 1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)
Umberto D. (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
Wayne's World (1992, Penelope Spheeris)
Why We Fight (2005, Eugene Jarecki)

Possibly the longest sentence fragment in history.

From Sarah Palin, delivered before an audience in Anchorage this week:

Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things up and maybe takin' off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and digging more debt, and taking away individual and state's rights and hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies.

Anyone else looking forward to 2012?

Celibacy and divorce

I've been reading John P. Meier's latest volume in his Marginal Jew series, and came across this passage, which I thought was worth sharing:

[O]ne wonders whether there is any connection between the celibate lifestyle of Jesus and his absolutist view on divorce. I remember with a smile how, after discussing the possible celibacy of Jesus during a lecture at the University of California, San Diego, the wife of my professor-host told me that the best proof that Jesus was celibate was that he totally forbade divorce--something no married man would ever have done. This may at first seem just a joke, but I invite the reader to reflect on the different approaches to divorce in the Catholic and Protestant churches and to ponder whether there is a correlation between the legal status of divorce and the marital status of the hierarchy in the discipline of each group. Celibate Catholic bishops and priests teach the Catholic laity that divorce is not permitted, while a mostly married Protestant clergy--though certainly not happy with the high divorce rate--generally do allow divorce and remarriage in their churches. (4.118)

I think it's very likely that there is a correlation. I would also point out that the Eastern Orthodox churches, where married priests are common, also have a greater acceptance of divorce than in the Catholic Church.