Pretentious Top Tens

So I came across an insanely pretentious Top Ten on a scenester's blog, and it made me think about the films I think are amazing, and I wonder if they're not just as pretentious?

I personally didn't think someone could actually watch a lot of the films on the list more than once, but I think sometimes the films you think are the best films aren't necessarily the ones that you love and watch all the time. For me, these top tens would be very different.

To demonstrate this, I will give you the list of my top ten best films, and my favourite films.

Top Ten Best Films

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
No Country For Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007)
Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003)

11th on the list (Hottest 100 does it, so why can't I?)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)

They're tied - couldn't decide.

Very almost unashamedly American. Almost.

Top Ten Loved Films

Singin' In The Rain (Donen, 1952)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Hughes, 1986)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (Apatow, 2005)
Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)
Amelie (Jeunet, 2001)

11th

The Hangover (Phillips, 2009)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Stoller, 2008)

I'm as surprised by you probably are to find that there are common films on both lists. What is interesting, though not that surprising to me, is that the films I think are incredibly powerful either contain violence or carry a threat of implicit violence, or a story of flawed men - or both. Meanwhile, the films I love are mostly comedies, but they too are mostly about deeply flawed men, or contain violence, or both. Luckily, three of them are predominantly about strong, independent, eccentric women.

I really must explore my fascination with representations of masculinity. Which reminds me - Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004) should really be on these lists.