My top 144 films

Something a bit different. For posterity, I suppose.

I’m not really a film buff and if I’d time to watch all the films I wanted to this ‘desert island films’ list would probably look a lot different. There’s probably even some on here I wouldn’t include after a rewatch and there’s obviously a bunch I’ve forgotten. A lot of them are nostalgic inclusions and some are ‘so bad they’re good’.

Films require a fair bit of brain power to watch critically and I guess because we don’t have time in an economic system that just makes us work so much, we just don’t have the time or energy to watch them properly, so we quite understandably often settle for ‘easy’ viewing. We’re fed increasingly cheap, derivative rubbish because it’s cheap to churn out. Late capitalist films in particular promote hyper-individualist atomisation, overweaning sentimentalism, hyper-violent dystopia, and pure tragedy (victimisation); instead of anything imaginatively utopian or celebrating, say, the power of collective resistance.

Nostalgia wise, The Ghostbusters films are ‘pure ideology’ in that they clearly promote The Entrepreneur/small business/start up, rather than simply an essential public service (and of course superstition has long been promoted by the powers that be as a ‘distraction’ etc); but they’re still very entertaining, amusing and well acted. The Indiana Jones films are obviously all sorts of problematic, but the adventures still provide vicarious fun. Back to the Future is a bit of kids film that centres the Individual genius and the white male but I’m a sucker for time travel stuff and at least its post-Alpha Male and post-Newtonian.

More recently, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight celebrate our neoliberal dystopia, but they’re superbly made and Heath Ledger’s performance really was indelible just for sheer effort. Another Chris Nolan film, Interstellar, is explicitly Malthusian and superstitious and yet, because of its advanced exploration of space-time physics in the context of a collapsing capitalist order and thus a historical burst forard, utterly pre-socialist — the film even finishes, albeit unwittingly and still with an attachment to the US flag, with the founding of a fully-automated yet primitive global communism.

Paul Verhoevan’s Total Recall is my favourite film. It’s better than The Matrix films, which I still love, because you can’t tell reality from fantasy, whereas the latter has a very definite binary between the two worlds inhabited.

Arnold Schwarzeneggar is a liberal-conservative but he is in most of my favourite films. He’s a revolutionary, after all, in both Total Recall and The Running Man, in which he revels in a host of smirk-inducing one-liners.

Anyway.

1. Total Recall
2. The Terminator
3. Terminator 2
4. Back to the Future I / II / III
5. The Running Man
6. Robocop
7. Elysium
8. Interstellar
9. 12 Monkeys
10. Minority Report
11. Pierrot le Fou
12. City of God
13. Ghostbusters / Ghostbusters 2
14. The Matrix / Reloaded / Revolutions
15. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
16. Batman Begins / The Dark Knight
17. Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark / Temple of Doom / The Last Crusade
18. Blade Runner
19. Stars Wars: A New Hope / The Empire Strikes Back / Return of the Jedi
20. Looper
21. Dune I / II
22. Die Hard I / II / III
23. Altered States
24. The HandMaiden
25. Alien
26. Sorry To Bother You
27. Matewan
28. Jimmy’s Hall
29. The Young Karl Marx
30. The Great Dictator
31. Lenin: The Train
32. Rosa Luxemburg
33. The Fall of Berlin
34. The Motorcycle Diaries
35. Parasite
36. Snowpiercer
37. Midnight Express
38. Good Will Hunting
39. Starship Troopers
40. They Live
41. Children of Men
42. Repo Man
43. The Mask
44. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
45. Predestination
46. Demolition Man
47. The Truman Show
48. Gattaca
49. Hackers
50. Escape From New York
51. He-Man: Master of the Universe
52. K-Pax
53. He Died With A Falafel In His Mouth
54. Tron
55. Braindead
56. Okja
57. Synchronic
58. Edge of Tomorrow
59. Across The Spider-Verse
60. Kneecap
61. The Time Machine
62. Predator
63. The Good The Bad and The Ugly
64. The Iron Giant
65. Fever Pitch
66. The Man Who Wasn’t There
67. High-Rise
68. Whiplash
69. District 9
70. Her
71. Spirited Away
72. Death Becomes Her
73. The Shining
74. Ex Machina
75. Shirley
76. Grimm
77. The Thing
78. The Martian
79. American History X
80. Green Book
81. There Will Be Blood
82. The Third Man
83. Eyes Wide Shut
84. Dead Poet’s Society
85. Being John Malchovich
86. Everything Everywhere All At Once
87. Melancholia
88. Joker
89. Requiem For A Dream
90. Citizen Kane
91. Casino
92. Trainspotting
93. Ghost In The Shell
94. A Scanner Darkly
95. Get Out
96. Con Air
97. My Dinner With Andre
98. Soylent Green
99. Akira
100. Valerian
101. Trading Places
102. Brazil
103. Annihilation
104. Donnie Darko
105. Thank You For Not Smoking
106. The Titanic
107. Catch Me If You Can
108. The 6th Day
109. 21 Jump Street
110. Fight Club
111. Blue Beatle
112. Rocky
113. Night of the Living Dead
114. Logan’s Run
115. Stalker
116. Pride
117. Solaris
118. Network
119. Metropolis
120. Alphaville
121. Jaws
122. Submarine
123. The Incredible Shrinking Man
124. Pan’s Labyrinth
125. Good Bye, Lenin
126. Chaplin
127. Weekend
128. La Chinoise
129. Hook
130. Flight of the Navigator
131. Last Action Hero
132. ET
133. Conan Barbarian
134. Singing In The Rain
135. Universal Soldier
136. Timecop
137. Short Circuit
138. The Goonies
139. Labyrinth
140. Look Who’s Talking
141. 3 Men and a Baby
142. The Blob
143. Jurassic Park
144. Dark Angel