Undaunted - well, maybe a little bit daunted - by the fact that subjective lists of anything are arbitrary, here's an arbitrary list of the Movie Buzzard's top 100 films, subject to change at any time.
Some of these titles are iconic. Some are idiosyncratic choices that probably wouldn't turn up on any other list. All are movies I wouldn't want to head into the future without.
"A Trip To the Moon" (1902/Georges Méliès)
"Intolerance" (1916/D.W. Griffith)
"Nosferatu" (1922/F.W. Murnau)
"Sherlock Jr." (1924/Buster Keaton)
"Metropolis" (1927/Fritz Lang)
"Napoleon" (1927/Abel Gance)
"The Passion of Joan of Arc"
(1928/Carl Theodor Dreyer)
"Dracula" (1931/Tod Browning)
"The Mummy" (1932/Karl Freund)
"Duck Soup" (1933/Leo McCarey)
"Tarzan and His Mate" (1934/Cedric Gibbons)
"Bride of Frankenstein" (1935/James Whale)
"Modern Times" (1936/Charlie Chaplin)
"Way Out West" (1937/James W. Horne)
"Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939/Frank Capra)
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939/Victor Fleming)
"Citizen Kane" (1941/Orson Welles)
"The Wolf Man" (1941/George Waggner)
"Casablanca" (1942/Michael Curtiz)
"The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943/William Wellman)
"My Darling Clementine" (1946/John Ford)
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951/Robert Wise)
"The African Queen" 1951/John Huston)
"High Noon" (1952/Fred Zinnemann)
"Singin' In the Rain"
(1952/Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen)
"The Crimson Pirate" (1952/Robert Siodmak)
"Roman Holiday" (1953/William Wyler)
"Pickup On South Street" (1953/Samuel Fuller)
"Sabrina" (1954/Billy Wilder)
"Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1959/Ed Wood)
"The Mouse That Roared" (1959/Jack Arnold)
"Psycho" (1960/Alfred Hitchcock)
"Charade" (1963/Stanley Donen)
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964/Stanley Kubrick)
"The Train" (1964/John Frankenheimer)
"A Fistful of Dollars" (1964/Sergio Leone)
"The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965/Robert Aldrich)
"Blow-Up" (1966/Michelangelo Antonioni)
"The Professionals" (1966/Richard Brooks)
"Where Eagles Dare" (1968/Brian G. Hutton)
"The Wild Bunch" (1969/Sam Peckinpah)
"Easy Rider" (1969/Dennis Hopper)
"The Magic Christian" (1969/Joseph McGrath)
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"
(1969/George Roy Hill)
"M*A*S*H" (1970/Robert Altman)
"The Ballad of Cable Hogue" (1971/Sam Peckinpah)
"The Godfather" (1972/Francis Ford Coppola)
"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973/Peter Yates)
"The Taking of Pelham 123" (1974/Joseph Sargent)
"Young Frankenstein" (1974/Mel Brooks)
"Chinatown" (1974/Roman Polanski)
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
(1975/Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones)
"Nashville" (1975/Robert Altman)
"All the President's Men" (1976/Alan Pakula)
"Sorcerer" (1977/William Friedkin)
"Animal House" (1978/John Landis)
"Days of Heaven" (1978/Terrence Malick)
"Alien" (1979/Ridley Scott)
"All That Jazz" (1979/Bob Fosse)
"Apocalypse Now" (1979/Francis Ford Coppola)
"Airplane!" (1980/Jim Abrahams, David Zucker
and Jerry Zucker)
"Stripes" (1981/Ivan Reitman)
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981/Steven Spielberg)
"Blade Runner" (1982/Ridley Scott)
"The Big Chill" (1983/Lawrence Kasdan)
"The Right Stuff" (1983/Philip Kaufman)
"Trouble In Mind" (1985/Alan Rudolph)
"The Princess Bride" (1986/Rob Reiner)
"Wings of Desire" (1987/Wim Wenders)
"Radio Days" (1987/Woody Allen)
"The Navigator" (1988/Vincent Ward)
"Field of Dreams" (1989/Phil Alden Robinson)
"The Civil War" (1990)/Ken Burns)
"Life Is Sweet" (1990/Mike Leigh)
"Thelma & Louise" (1991/Ridley Scott)
"Pulp Fiction" (1994/Quentin Tarantino)
"The Usual Suspects" (1995/Bryan Singer)
"Fargo" (1996/Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
"Lone Star" (1996/John Sayles)
"Bandits" (1997/Katja von Garnier)
"Run Lola Run" (1998/Tom Tykwer)
"Dogma" (1999/Kevin Smith)
"Divine Intervention" (2002/Elia Suleiman)
"Mystic River" (2003/Clint Eastwood)
"A History of Violence" (2005/David Cronenberg)
"Good Night, and Good Luck" (2005/George Clooney)
"V For Vendetta" (2005/James McTeigue)
"Linda Linda Linda" (2005/Nobuhiro Yamashita)
"The Brave One" (2007/Neil Jordan)
"Rumba" (2008/Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
and Bruno Romy)
"Hugo" (2011/Martin Scorsese)
"The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014/Wes Anderson)
"The Dressmaker" (2015/Jocelyn Moorhouse)
"Spotlight" (2015/Tom McCarthy)
"La La Land" (2016/Damien Chazelle)
"The Shape of Water" (2017/Guillermo del Toro)
"They Shall Not Grow Old" (2018/Peter Jackson)
"The Old Man and the Gun" (2018/David Lowery)
"1917" (2019/Sam Mendes)
"Poor Things" (2023/Yorgos Lanthimos)
