Was having a studio conversation yesterday with Hoodrats (mainly Ben) about favourite films. Here’s Ben’s Top 10 from his blog. He pointed out a significant gap in my cultural experience: that I’ve hardly seen any great, significant European cinema. Anyway, afterwards I went back to the couple of times I’ve worked out lists before – and made a new favourites list. Then I fell asleep on the sofa and froze in the night.

1. Leon (Luc Besson)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
3. Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull)
4. Prince Mononoke (Hayao Mayazaki)
5. Enter The Void (Gaspar Noe)

6. Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads/Jonathan Demme)
7. When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner)
8. A Matter Of Life & Death (Powell & Pressburger)
9. Local Hero (Bill Forsythe)
10. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis)

11. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro)
12. Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Mayazaki)
13. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
14. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
15. Alien (Ridley Scott)

16. All The President’s Men (Alan Pakula)
17. I Am Cuba (Mikhael Kalatozov)
18. 12 Angry Men (Syndey Lumet)
19. Sunshine (Danny Boyle)
20. A Bout De Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard)

21. The Searchers (John Ford)
22. Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
23. Battle Royale (Kinji Fuakasaku)
24. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
25. Life Of Brian (Terry Jones)

I wonder if this list means I don’t get much of my deeper emotional nourishment from cinema: instead just want to be shown stuff in a way I haven’t expected, or seen before, and/or get top line emotional escapism.