ESSAY
THERE’S NO RIGHT OR WRONG IN MOVIE LOVE
If you’re like most people, you probably freeze when someone asks you what you think is the best movie of all time. What if you give a confident answer, only to wake up in the middle of the night, certain you should have said something else? And do you choose the movie you love most, or one you know is commonly identified as great? After all, if you go with one of the classic, default choices—Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather—no one can accuse you of having bad taste, or strange taste. Or the wrong taste.
After compiling and annotating my own list of the 100 best movies of the past century—broken down by decade, 10 pictures in each—I’m here to reassure you that there’s no such thing as the wrong taste. And if there is such a thing as bad or strange taste, then my advice is to own it. No one can dictate your preferences to you; they’re as individual as your fingerprints. Besides, the issue is further complicated by the fact that there are so many barometers of greatness. Is the best movie the one you can watch anytime, the one that always lifts your mood? Is it the one that makes you cry the hardest? Is it the one with the actors you never tire of watching?
Your decisions about what constitutes greatness will be specific to you. In this case, I’m giving you mine. The internet is full of polls that have divined, by soliciting votes from film critics and filmmakers, what are ostensibly the greatest movies of all time. This list isn’t the result of a poll. Aside from the question of whether we really need yet another film survey, there’s a way in which choosing by committee irons the idea of loving movies into a smooth,
