My relationship with film is a little different to the way I feel about books. Before I was a teacher I used to live a patchwork lifestyle of sorts... I worked in retail to pay the rent in a series of Young Ones-styled hovels and spent my nights playing in punk bands. While I drifted through my 20s in this way I was also lucky enough to get the opportunity to subsidise my income through writing hundreds of film reviews. I became obsessive about cinema and I began to work my way through large parts of the film canon - this kept me going for the better part of a decade, and I could easily watch 10-20 films a week sometimes.
So this list is close to my heart :)
These days I probably only watch one new movie a month though. Far too busy with work, and family, and preoccupied with reading and writing. But that's okay. I'm sure I'll get back to working through the film canon one day.
Like the Literary Canon, this is a living meta-list. Film especially is much more 'alive' than literature - there are numerous websites that continuously aggregate film popularity and critically acclaimed movies, and the history of cinema is much shorter than literature's, so the drawing-together of a cinematic meta-canon is a less 'fixed' event. It's constantly in a state of flux - as if to say, this canon is still forming. Anyway, here's how the above spreadsheet was put together:
- 1001 Films You Must Watch Before You Die - a film-equivalent to the popular book compendium of a similar name. This list is a collaborative effort that calls upon the expertise of approximately 100 respected film critics.
- The Academy Awards - it's been fashionable to decry the Oscars for a long time (and as far as an awards ceremony goes it isn't without its faults) but no one can say that the Academy Awards aren't the most famous film awards in the world. For every film that feels a bit off there are easily a lot of films that are very much worth seeing, and these are America's version of a Film Canon. For my list I included Best Film Winners, Best Film Nominees, Best International Film Winners and Nominees, Best Documentary Winners and Nominees, and Best Animated Film Winners and Nominees.
- They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? - of all the lists I've used as a reference, this is the one that I put the most trust in. They Shoot Pictures, Don't They is a meta-canon that brings together the opinions of film critics over time to create a more global 'Best 1000 Films' list. This list constantly changes as there are new films and new critics emerging all the time, so I've just utilised the 2020/2021 version for now. I've also included the Next Best 1000 Films from this site as well.
- The Story of Film - this is a groundbreaking 15-part documentary series from renowned Irish film critic Mark Cousins. It takes a different approach to most 'best of' lists in that it surveys the history of cinema to chart its most important developments. This is done in a way to demonstrate how the medium has shifted and grown over time into its own art form.
- A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies - a bit subjective to include the opinions of just one filmmaker but Scorsese offers a robust representation of the uniquely American genres (specifically the Western, the Musical, and the Gangster/Film Noir) that have influenced the world over.
- Sight & Sound - this British film magazine creates a new list every ten years by inviting famous film critics and filmmakers to contribute their picks for 'best film'. Widely considered to be the most respected of film magazine lists, perhaps due to its longevity (it was founded in the 1930s).
- IMDB - I used the 4/10/21 version of IMDB's constantly shifting Top 250 to fill out the list with a few more populist titles. These are some of the more popular films that sometimes get overlooked by critics but are widely considered by film fans to be of high quality - a grass roots contribution, if you will.
- Rotten Tomatoes - 'RT Top' in the spreadsheet refers to the Top 100 'Certified Fresh' titles from the Rotten Tomatoes website. The purpose of this website is to aggregate ratings from hundreds of film reviews but, strangely, 99 of these films are from the last 20 years. I don't know if this is a deliberate choice or whether it indicates that film reviewing has increased exponentially in the last couple of decades, but I've included this information nonetheless.
Anyway, that's it for now. I'm sure in the future I can expand the list by looking at Cannes, and the AFI and BAFTA awards. As of this point, the spreadsheet in the link above contains over 3000 films so it should keep any completist busy!
