A-Z of favourite films - **THE END**

So you thought it was all over? Well it will be soon. I started way back in October with this series of blogs featuring my favourite films. For better or worse, I arbitrarily chose to categorise them by letter, ending up with my favourite film beginning with A, beginning with B etc. Some letters were harder than others - M&S stick in my mind, not for being a supermarket, but for annoyingly huge categories that took hours to do. Q and Z on the other hand were annoying for the opposite reason - the low number of films seen. But anyway, it's all over now, and below is the final list with a bit of a summing up underneath.


I haven't linked all the films, but if you want to see the blog for each letter in more detail (and why wouldn't you(!)), just do a blog search on the right for the A-Z of films and all the blogs should be there.



A – Annie Hall
Woody Allen’s film came out on top in a large category of 105 films, narrowly beating such films as The Apartment, Amelie, All About Eve and Anatomy of a Murder

B- The Big Sleep
Another huge category, this time with around 150 films in. The Howard Hawks film saw off competition from Laurel and Hardy’s Blockheads, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and the Coen Brother’s The Big Lebowski, among others

C – Casablanca
120 films came down to a two horse race between Casablanca and Citizen Kane, though City Lights, Chinatown, and Chungking Express also made up the final 5.

D – Dr Strangelove
The Kubrick film came top out of the 100 films in the D category, although Duck Soup and Double Indemnity ran it close

E – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
A bit of relief with the first sub-100 film category; only 35 films in this category. Michel Gondry’s film was the clear winner here, and the most contemporary of all the winners.

F – Fight Club
I’ve just looked back on my blog to check the winner for F – I was convinced it was Fargo. It was another 2 horse race in the end; I’m not sure I made the right decision as Fargo is such a favourite of mine. However I plumped for Fight Club in the end. Others in the final five were Frankenstein, Freaks and The French Connection

G – Le Grande Illusion
75 films were whittled down to this French winner - the first of my foreign-language winners. It was a close call though, with The Great Dictator and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as strong contenders.

H – Harvey
Let’s face it, none of the other 70 –odd films in this category were going to beat the near-perfection of Harvey. Try as they might, His Girl Friday, High Noon, and Hot Fuzz, could not dethrone it.

I – It’s a Wonderful Life
Over 50 films in this category and the final five included three East Asian films: Ikiru, In the Mood for Love, and Infernal Affairs. In the Heat of the Night was the other American contender, but the perennial Christmas classic won it.

J – Jaws
A small category – only 25 in total, with the Spielberg film triumphing over Jean de Florette and Jackie Brown.

K – Kind Hearts and Coronets
A similar sized category to J, and the Ealing studio’s film won it, although Kikijuro came damn close to winning too. Did I make the wrong decision? Ah, it’s too late now.

L – The Lady Killers
Needless to say, this is the original version of The Lady Killers and NOT the remake. A second Ealing winner in a row, though a much larger category. A couple of Hitchcock’s in the final five, along with Local Hero and Let the Right One in. It should also be noted that I forgot to put The Lives of Others in this category, for reasons too mundane to explain. It would probably have got in the final five too, dislodging either The Lady Vanishes or Lifeboat.

M – A Matter of Life and Death
Another gargantuan category of about 150 films and loads of contenders, but this Powell & Pressburger took the plaudits, beating off movies such as M, The Maltese Falcon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Magnolia. It was also the third British winner in a row.

N – North by Northwest
The first of my Hitchcock winners saw off competition from another of his films, Notorious, as well as Night of the Hunter, No Man’s Land and No Country for Old Men.

O – The Odd Couple
Under 50 films in this category, but there were some good ones amongst them; Lemmon and Matthau’s great comedy beat off the likes of On the Waterfront and Once Upon a Time in the West

P – Psycho
Our 80 P films were whittled down to a final five that included The Philadelphia Story, The Producers, The Player and Pulp Fiction, but the master of suspense triumphed and Hitch had his second winner

Q – Quiz Show
Only five films in this category, so pickings were slim indeed – it still grates that I had to have the awful Quartier Mozart in my “top” five, but out of the five, Quiz Show is my favourite.

R – Rear Window
From 5 Q entries to 100 R films, and our third Hitchcock winner within five letters. Rear Window beat off three foreign language entries (including two from Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon and Ran) as well as Raging Bull to deservedly win the crown.

S – Some Like it Hot
Such a huge category it was split over 2 blogs, there were 200 S films to deal with. Finally the Billy Wilder comedy came through, beating other greats such as Shadow of a Doubt, Singin’ in the Rain, The Shawshank Redemption, The Seven Samurai, The Sting, The Station Agent, Shaun of the Dead, and well.. you get the message. There were A LOT of S films.

T – Toy Story 2
Possibly the winner over which I was most unsure – did it really beat Taxi Driver and Twelve Angry Men? How did that happen? Possibly because I wanted an animation amongst my winners, but was also a compromise as I just couldn’t decide which film out of 125 would win. I kept changing the winner –at various stages it was To Kill a Mockingbird, This is Spinal Tap, and even the original The Taking of Pelham 123, a film not even now in the top five.

U – The Usual Suspects
U was a more manageable category – just 17 films with The Usual Suspects seeing off Unforgiven and Up to win here.

V – Vertigo
Another small category and Hitchcock gets his fourth and final winner on the list, beating off Spanish film Volver for the title

W – The Wild Bunch
Over 70 films in this surprisingly large category. I opted for Peckinpah’s Western above such films as The Wizard of Oz, Whisky Galore, and the animations Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, and the recent Wall-E.

X – Citizen Kane.
I hadn’t seen any X films so I basically cheated and put into this category films from other letters that hadn’t quite won. Hence Citizen Kane beat the likes of Singin’ in the Rain and Fargo to win.

Y – Young Frankenstein
Only 9 films in this category and Mel Brooks eventually gets a winner, just beating Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take it With You to the top spot

Z – Zatoichi
Another category with only five films, and Zatoichi became only my second foreign-language winner – I was expecting there to be more to be honest.


So there’s the 26, and if there’s any you haven’t seen, I’d recommend you remedy that as soon as possible. They’re not quite my favourite 26 films of course, due to the difference in sizes between the categories; for example two films that didn’t make the list - Fargo or Singin’ in the Rain would have beaten Quiz Show or Jaws for instance. Having said that, it still looks a pretty good list – 24 of them are in English, so even if you don’t like films with subtitles (you idiot!), it’s safe to watch most of them.

Little bit of dull stattage:

• I own 22 of the winners on DVD; the exceptions being Le Grande Illusion, Jaws, Quiz Show and Toy Story 2
  
• The earliest winner is Le Grande Illusion
  
• The latest winner is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
  
• There’s four Hithcock films, though unless I’m much mistaken, no other director has more than one film in the list. Woody Allen’s got one, as have Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Sam Peckinpah and Orson Welles. Disappointed there’s no Coen Brothers or Laurel and Hardy film but then you can’t have everything.
  
• I've seen too many films, but also not enough - it can't be a definitive list, simply because even though i've seen a lot of films, the number I've seen pale into insignificane compared to the number I haven't see.

And well, that’s about it. If you thought I was working my way towards a huge, exciting, Hollywood ending, you’d be wrong. It’s more like an arthouse ending, gradually drifting off until…. FADE OUT ....