A-Z of favourite films - X-tremely tricky category

The 24th in my series of blogs on my favourite A-Z films, and we hit an obstacle.

So we finally reach letter X, and dear reader, we have a problem. As regular readers (yes there are two, or three at a pinch) will know, I’ve been shortlisting each category into a final five list of films, from which I choose a winner. This method nearly hit the skids with letters such as Q where I’d only seen a very few films, but I’d just managed to see enough to keep it going. X is a different story though – not only have I not seen enough films here to make up a final five – I haven’t actually seen a single film beginning with X. Nope, I’ve never seen X-Men or The X-Files movie; Olivia Newton John’s Xanadu passed me by and not only did I not see Xtro 2: The Second Encounter, but I didn’t even seen the original Xtro (a UK Science fiction adventure apparently, which doesn’t look all that good to be honest)

So what to do? A few options

1. Leave the X category out altogether – unsatisfactory from my OCD point of view – I need 26 films dammit, not 25.

2. X-rated films – a possible option, though I’d have to go through each film and look up its original certificate which might take longer than it took me to write the S blog. However I do know that Midnight Cowboy was the first X-certificate film to win the Best Picture Oscar. What do you mean you already knew that?

3. Include films just with x in the title. Another possibility – it’s rather arbitrary, but hey, so is the present system

4. Do what I’m about to do

And yes, I’ve chosen option four. Sod democracy, this blog here is a dictatorship and if you don’t like it, then….no hang on, don’t go….

Anyway, what I’m going to do is take a film from each category so far (A-W) taking a film from each that didn’t win the category, but NEARLY won it. That’ll then make it fairer on those films in huge categories such as M and S that only missed out because the category was so strong. Or something. Basically it’s just an excuse to list films that I like, and then choose one at random that I favour of the others.

I won’t say anything about the films as it’s probably been said in previous blogs. So the list (and I’ll miss Q out as there really isn’t another contender from there) consists of the following films:

The Apartment
Blockheads
Citizen Kane
Duck Soup
El Orfanato
Fargo
The Godfather
His Girl Friday
In the Heat of the Night
Jackie Brown
Kikijuro
Local Hero
The Maltese Falcon
Notorious
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Producers
Rashomon
Singin in the Rain
Taxi Driver
Up
Volver
The Wizard of Oz

And with a huge sense of anti-climax, I’ll narrow those down to five:

Citizen Kane, beaten in the C category by Casablanca
Fargo, beaten in the F category by Fight Club
Rashomon, beaten in the R category by Rear Window
Singin' in the Rain, beaten in the S category by Some Like it Hot
Taxi Driver, beaten controversially in the T category by Toy Story 2

And out of those five, the winner is Citizen Kane. I’ll be honest, it was always going to be Citizen Kane ever since I rejected it in favour of Casablanca.

But to be fair, Citizen Kane does have a connection with the letter X.

Oh yes.

What’s the name of Charles Foster Kane’s huge gothic house in the film?

Yes, it's Xanadu.

And what does Xanadu begin with?

Yes, it's X.

Q, and indeed ED

Thank you and good night.