> I know there are a lot of movie fans on the forum and I was wondering what everyone's favorite films are.

I usually try not to compose a list of favorite films (or songs) because I'll invariably leave off a great movie or two or I'll have something on the list that I loved when I was fourteen, but would probably hate now if I ever saw it again.

(That movie being The Pirate Movie, a bizarre remake of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" that starred Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins. When it was broadcast on HBO, I watched it nearly every time it was shown -- if you know HBO from those days, that means I saw the movie over twenty times in a three week period. No doubt if I saw it again, I'd want to go back in time and slap some sense into my younger self. End of digression.)

Back in college, my favorite two films were Blade Runner and Brazil. However, they don't have as much appeal to me these days. I have watched the films so many times, I have no desire to sit down and watch either again.

If I were to have a Movie Library -- and looking over my DVD collection, I think I do -- one director's work would be featured prominently: Hitchcock. North By Northwest is one of the best films ever made. Although I've only seen it once, Rope continues to fascinate me with the real time gimmick. Rear Window is another amazing story with a wonderfully executed idea behind the movie. I like Psycho because I like trying to get into the mindset of the viewer watching the movie back in 1960.

There are a few films I like that nobody else seems to. I think Hudson Hawk is a fantastic movie (save the scene where Bruce Willis is punched and can't stop swaying -- ugh). High Road to China is a very enjoyable action adventure film in the spirit of the Indiana Jones movies (Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong in a globe-hopping search during the 1920's). Frauds is another film that nobody seems to know about, yet shows that even Phil Collins (yes, that Phil Collins) could have played The Joker in Batman (1989).

I try not to add movies made within the last few years into my (non-)list of great movies, for I think the mark of a great movie is that it can evoke the same feeling of greatness years later.

As yet another aside:

You mention wanting to see Spider-Man. Enjoyable as it is, I don't think that movie would make it onto a list of Great Movies. Many sequences of the movie feature Spider-Man or Peter Parker running, swinging, and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. In most of the scenes where he's bounding from one rooftop to another, he doesn't seem to be obeying the laws of physics; it's obvious that these scenes are showcasing a computer rendered Spider-Man and not a costumed Tobey Maguire. While it's only a minor thing, it's obvious enough that the movie will win an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

-Faux Pas