My favourite films

1. Synecdoche, New York
- 2008
- 🎬︎✍︎ Charlie Kaufman
- 👥︎ Philip Seymour Hoffman
“This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter.”

I genuinely have no idea how this is only two hours long — it felt like i was there for four. I could ramble in a tangle about this film for hours and hours, but i’ll keep my thoughts to one observation/theory — Caden Cotard is a fictional character. (Well, obviously, yes, but he is also a fictional character within the film, eventually being portrayed by the emissary of his creator.)
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- 2004
- 🎬︎ Michel Gondry
- ✍︎ Charlie Kaufman
- 👥︎ Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet
“What do we do now?” “Enjoy it.”

I dearly wish Jim Carrey was in more dramatic works. His comedy doesn’t appeal to me at all (too American), and yet, every time he shows up on a drama, he fits into the role like a glove.
3. Back to the Future
- 1985
- 🎬︎✍︎ Robert Zemeckis
- ✍︎ Bob Gale
- 👥︎ Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd
“When this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour… you’re gonna see some serious shit.”

There is not an ounce of fat on this thing — they don’t make ’em (’em being blockbusters) like they used to!
4. The Truman Show
- 1998
- 🎬︎ Peter Weir
- 👥︎ Jim Carrey, Ed Harris
“We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented.”
5. Twelve Angry Men
- 1957
- 🎬︎ Sidney Lumet
- ✍︎ Reginald Rose
- 👥︎ Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb
“You think he’s not guilty, huh?” “I don’t know. It’s possible.”
6. Interstellar
- 2014
- 🎬︎ Christopher Nolan
- 🎥︎ Hoyte van Hoytema
- 🎼︎ Hans Zimmer
“Do not go gentle into that good night.”

This was the first film i ever loved enough to call my favourite.
7. The Fifth Element
- 1997
- 🎬︎ Luc Besson
- 👥︎ Bruce Willis, Mila Jovovich
“Yes, she knows it’s a multipass! Anyway, we’re in love.”
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
- 2014
- 🎬︎ Wes Anderson
- 👥︎ Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori
“You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilisation left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed, that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”
9. The Northman
- 2022
- 🎬︎ Robert Eggers
- 👥︎ Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman
“I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!”
10. 기생충 Parasite
- 2019
- 🎬︎✍︎ Bong Joon-ho
- 👥︎ Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun
“How should i describe it… a belt of trust?”

This film always gets put on those “super depressing dark movies that will make you want to blow your brains out with a magnum revolver” lists, and i’m like… really? How can you not just have fun spending time with these horrible people?
11. Shaun of the Dead
- 2004
- 🎬︎ Edgar Wright
- 👥︎ Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
“We are not using the Z-word!”

I hmm’ed and hawed for ages trying to figure out which of the Cornetto trilogy to include. What cinched it for Shaun of the Dead is the scene where Shaun’s mum reveals she’s infected and that she just didn’t want to bother him — a perfect nugget of emotion in the middle of all the rom-zom-com.
12. Cloud Atlas
- 2012
- 🎬︎ Lilly and Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present.”

This is one of those marmite movies that everyone either loves or hates. Me personally, i loved it — give it a shot!
13. Lola rennt Run Lola Run
- 1998
- 🎬︎ Tom Tykwer
- 👥︎ Franka Potente
“The ball is round; the game lasts ninety minutes — that’s a fact. The rest is theory.”
14. The Thing
- 1982
- 🎬︎ John Carpenter
- 💄︎ Rob Bottin
- 👥︎ Kurtjeff Russelbridges
“Nobody trusts anybody now, and we’re all very tired.”
15. Annihilation
- 2018
- 🎬︎✍︎ Alex Garland
- 👥︎ Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh
“We’re disintegrating — our bodies as fast as our minds. Can’t you feel it?”

The best way i can describe this is “if 2001 were made by botanists”.
16. Titanic
- 1997
- 🎬︎ James Cameron
- 👥︎ Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet
“And so they lived happily together for three hundred years, in the land of Tír na nÓg — land of eternal youth and beauty…”

I’m man enough to admit i cried like six times in a row. It’s a great film and you’re all just going to have to deal with it.
17. The Shining
- 1970
- 🎬︎ Stanley Kubrick
- 👥︎ Shelley Duvall, Jack Nicholson
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
18. Being John Malkovich
- 1999
- 🎬︎ Spike Jonze
- ✍︎ Charlie Kaufman
- 👥︎ John Cusack
“You see the world through John Malkovich’s eyes and then, after about fifteen minutes, you're spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.”
19. North by Northwest
- 1959
- 🎬︎ Alfred Hitchcock
- 👥︎ Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint
“You’re no fake — you’re a genuine idiot.” “Thank you.”
20. The Matrix Reloaded
- 2003
- 🎬︎ Lilly and Lana Wachowski
- 👥︎ Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss
“Where is he now?” “He’s doing his Superman thing.”

I will, one day, be impaled on a pike for speaking the truth — the truth that The Matrix Reloaded is better than the original. My argument is quite simple: where The Matrix is just a plain good movie, Reloaded is both a good good movie and a good bad movie: it works just as well sincerely as it does ironically. Keanu Reeves fights a hundred PS2-looking Hugos Weaving — what more could you want‽
HM. Sunshine
- 2007
- 🎬︎ Danny Boyle
- 👥︎ Cillian Murphy, Cliff Curtis
“It’s like… taking a shower in light.”

The first of the honourable mentions — not quite good enough for the main list, but it is perhaps my favourite depiction of outer space in a film. Space is beautiful (intoxicatingly so, even), and vast, and so, so cold, and so, so hot, and so, so dangerous, and it wants to kill you, and you still can’t look away.
HM. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
- 2023
- 👥︎ Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld
- 🎼︎ Daniel Pemberton
“You put on that badge because you know if you don’t, someone who shouldn’t will.”

On an object level, the story here is complete nonsense to anyone who hasn’t overdosed on Marvel Comics ’member-berries — but i’m more than willing to overlook that for the stellar accomplishment of every single technical aspect. This is a true audiovisual feast, and i’m glad to have seen it on the big screen while i could.
HM. The Hudsucker Proxy
- 1994
- 🎬︎ Joel and Ethan Coen
- 👥︎ Tim Robbins
“Mr Levin, 37!” “36.” “Walk. Down.”

I’m the only person who’s ever watched this film, so eh, even though in my heart of hearts it’s hanging out around number 60, i thought i’d give it a boost. It’s like Willy Wonka for grown-ups!

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