My Favourite Film

Continuing my occasional watch on movie listmaking, I thought I’d offer a few comments on the My Favourite Film list released last night by the ABC. For those who missed it, the list was as follows:

Some random thoughts (because I can’t be bothered writing something more focused):

– They managed to avoid any truly outrageous embarrassments, unlike the earlier My Favourite Book list in which the unknown Col Stringer managed to get on to spots 11 and 29 after emailing about 200 of his friends about the poll.

– Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Lord of the Rings won – replicating the favourite book result. However, for the film list, this is very dodgy accounting. Despite being made back-to-back, the films do have really different merits and ought to be considered separately. (The second film, for example, is not nearly as good as the first and third). Notably, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is counted separately on the list to the much superior, but unlisted Volume 2, but those have more claim to being a single film than Peter Jackson’s trilogy does.

– The voting technique seems to have heavily favoured sentimental favourites over traditional “classics.” This makes sense – asked to nominate just one film as their “favourite,” people will understandably tend to nominate a film that they have a very personal connection with. If allowed to nominate 5 or 10, they are more likely to slip in something like Citizen Kane. I think those classics would have fared much better if people could name a few films.

– The word that kept coming in to my mind in the top ten was “overrated.” I would unhesitatingly say that The Princess Bride, Amelie, Fight Club, and Blade Runner all fit in this category, despite all being good films. (And despite the fact that I have contributed a chapter to an upcoming book on Blade Runner). Shawshank and Donnie Darko have, embarrassingly, slipped by me.

– It was interesting to note how many of the top ten were films that didn’t do particularly well in the cinemas but built a following on video, with half the list falling into this category: Blade Runner, Donnie Darko, The Shawshank Redemption, The Princess Bride, and Fight Club.

– The 11-20 list is actually a better and more respectable list than the 1-10 list – even if it is headed by The Sound of Music.

– Pulp Fiction and Star Wars are the most defensible inclusions in the top ten. Although the panel assembled for the TV show counting down the list all seemed to accept Pulp Fiction was an “empty” film, I’d disagree: there’s a lot to Tarantino’s film, as I argue here.

– Good to see Aliens outpoll Alien. While I like both films, I’ve always thought Alien‘s slightly pretentious art-horror vibe got it more respect than it deserved: Cameron’s kinetic masterpiece is the better film. This poll reinforces my perception that people are becoming less shy about saying so.