HOW THE LIST WAS COMPILED
AND WHAT DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST

Previously I’ve complied video lists of my favourite westerns, favourite gangster movies, favourite war movies among other genres, but for some reason I’ve never compiled and published a list of my favourite movies of all time, spanning all genres, despite many requests. I think I avoided it because I felt like it was too daunting a list to compile in terms of the many complex criteria that could be used to make such a list. If I were to go by movies that I perceive as having the most social value then the resulting list would look very different to if I chose the movies according to which I thought were the most artistically and aesthetically well-made.

Other factors include whether I should try to represent all genres and all eras of the history of cinema so as to make the list appear “balanced”. However, I consider that a dishonest approach. One should not pretend to like something more than they actually do to win the approval of their audience.

So, for this list I decided to use a very basic, single criteria ... which movies do I still (today, in 2026) most enjoy rewatching, regardless of why I rewatch them? If we went back a few decades then movies like Taxi Driver (1976) and Bladerunner (1982) would definitely make the list because I rewatched them a lot at the time, but today I don’t enjoy those two particular movies as much (for reasons I won’t expand upon here).

The simple, current day, personal rewatchability criteria made this list quite easy to compile. I just had to ask myself, which movie do I prefer to watch … this or this. Result? These are the fifty movies I still go back to time and time again when I want something that will engage and stimulate me from beginning to end, and usually with very few boring moments during the ride. The reasons for that engagement are varied and I outline them for each film on the list.

Inevitably, certain types of movies ended up being excluded from this list that I believe have very high artistic or social value. Movies like Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), Bad Boy Bubby (1993) and Snowtown (2011) I consider as ground-breaking explorations of the dark side of the human condition, but I find them so depressing I hardly ever go back to them. Nevertheless, you will find quite a few dark subject matter movies on this list and perhaps the rewatchable engagement those chosen films achieve does, of itself, elevate them artistically over the rejected ones. I do believe that a film maker has a responsibility to entertain and engage their audience if they want their tale of dark social realism to have maximum impact. Most people have never seen the three aforementioned “depressing” films and that in itself can be considered a failure of the film makers to mass-communicate their themes for wide cultural impact.

Also inevitable is that movies with great artistic and social value that, in my view, drag out their run time didn’t make the list. You won’t find The Seven Samurai (1954), Barry Lyndon (1975) or Beau is Afraid (2023) here. I rate them very highly artistically, but they’re so long I virtually never rewatch them. You won’t even find Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on here. In fact it’s one of the films I’ve studied and published about most at the “film analysis” level, but I actually find several chunks of the film a bit boring to watch.

One other category of film you won’t see on this list is foreign language films. This isn’t to say they’re inferior. I just don’t enjoy reading dialogue instead of hearing it. So while I love The Seven Samurai (1954), Hidden Fortress (1958), Audition (1999), Amores Peros (2000), City of God (2002) and Apocalypto (2006) I cannot honestly put them on this list because I hardly ever feel like watching a movie where I have to read all the dialogue.

Last thing … I haven’t put my selected fifty films in a numbered list of certain ones having supposed superiority over one another. That would be too rigid a listing considering the variety of genres they cover. Instead I’ve listed them chronologically in terms of the years they were released.

Alright, that was the pre-amble. Now let’s get straight to the list ...