This post is a response to several comments in the Ask Karina thread, asking me about my favorite films of all time.

I find it extraordinarily difficult to make “top” or “best” lists of any kind; I’m uncomfortable making reductive decisions and I feel silly standing behind them. For years, when asked to name my favorite films of all time, I’ve listed three, in no particular order: A Star is Born (the 1954 version, directed by George Cukor and starring Judy Garland and James Mason); Barry Lyndon; and Ghostbusters. I’m both very serious about that, and also sort of not at all. A Star is Born, Barry Lyndon and Ghostbusters are films that I genuinely love and could watch and discuss endlessly, but they reached their status as My Favorite Films Evar almost arbitrarily. I needed to have something in my back pocket to throw out there, and those three films encompass much of what I love about all of the films I love, while at the same time maybe deflating the notion that one could sum up over a hundred years of art/product by naming a few movies they’ve seen and liked.

But since you asked, after the jump I’ve listed a few other things, off the top of my head, that I’ve seen and liked very much, in alphabetical order. I’m sure I will regret omissions to this list as soon as I publish it, so expect updates. I’ve also been asked to talk about guilty pleasures and films I once loved but have abandoned over time; I imagine those lists will be more interesting than this one, which probably won’t include any surprises for anyone who’s ever read this blog.

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul; Paul Thomas Anderson (everything but Hard Eight, really); most Antonioni, but I saw Red Desert first and will never pass up a chance to see it on a screen; Bride of Frankenstein; early Albert Brooks (through Lost in America; I like Defending My Life but that’s clearly where the plane starts to point down); California Split; Chronicle of a Summer; Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly; Eyes Wide Shut; Friday Night; Gimme Shelter; A Hard Day’s Night; Holiday; In a Lonely Place; the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Chris Marker; Pandora’s Box; Pierrot Le Fou; The Rules of the Game; Steven Soderbergh’s movies about criminals (particularly Out of Sight and The Limey, but you could define this loosely and pretty much cover my favorite aspects of his filmography); Joseph Von Sternberg (particularly Morocco, The Scarlet Empress and Macao); Sunset Boulevard; Swing Time; They All Laughed; Trouble in Paradise; pre-In the Mood For Love Wong Kar Wai and, of course, The Walking Dead.