Welcome to MovieJawn’s first ever Sound & Vision Poll, where our writers share why they love their 10 favorite movies of all time!

by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

It would be easy, I think, to make a list that is simply my ten favorite films ever. Well, not easy, but maybe I wouldn’t feel like I was missing things every single time I looked at the list? More than ten movies have fundamentally changed me as a person. And, like, I didn’t even put my favorite film ever (Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy) on this list. Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, a film about soulmates fighting giant monsters in mech suits isn’t on here, despite it rewiring my brain. And Park Chan Wook’s masterpiece The Handmaiden doesn’t make an appearance, either, despite being a deeply perfect film I never stop thinking about.

Instead, these were the first ten films that filtered into my brain when I sat down to make a list in the first place. I could have edited them, but something about not overthinking the entire exercise felt right. Am I gutted that I didn’t list any genre films? Absolutely. I honestly think it’s a bit batshit that I didn’t, considering John Carpenter’s entire filmography was right there and there’s never been a more perfect film than The Thing. But that can you do? I didn’t even list my favorite film. 

I don’t know what to say—there’s a lot of good movies out there. 

The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)

There are two films on this list that I watched for some of my favorite classes in college. The Apartment was part of an entire semester-long class about the films of Billy Wilder that I took. It was a great class, and I’ve been deeply in love with Wilder’s work ever since. As we explored his career and life, The Apartment always stuck out to me. The man worked in so many genres, but he was the best at romantic comedies, by and large. The Apartment isn’t quite that, not in the traditional sense (there’s a suicide attempt and lots of adultery throughout the film, after all), but it’s not a Billy Wilder film if it’s not a bit funny (or outrightly funny), a bit dramatic, and deeply romantic (tragic romances also accepted). 

Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine are certainly one of my favorite film couples and their journey takes you through the entire spectrum of human emotions and the film is absolutely stunning in its strongly contrasted black-and-white. Besides, has anything been more romantic than MacLaine’s “shut up and deal,” at the end? Perfection, no matter which way you slice it.

Clue (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1985)

Based on one of my favorite board games ever, Clue is the farcical whodunnit to beat. It’s outrageous, hilarious, and deeply quotable. It also has Tim Curry. Which… what’s better than a Tim Curry performance that’s firing on all cylinders? And while I wish I could have experienced the “different theaters with different endings” bit in person, nothing beats the home video experience of watching all three ending back-to-back as part of the run of the film. Of all the films on this particular list, it’s the only true box office bomb. But it’s also the only true cult hit (as is the Tim Curry film tradition). 

Clue is actually the answer to the question many have failed to answer properly: how do you adapt a board game? I don’t exactly know how Lynn and John Landis managed to do it so perfectly, but the fact remains that they did. A willingness to meet the source material, such as it is, where it already is—and to take into consideration the frantic nature of family game nights probably helped. There has never been another film quite like Clue, which is fine. Means I get to watch Clue a lot!

Clueless (dir. Amy Heckerling, 1995)

It is entirely possible that Clueless is the most perfect teen film in existence. It’s also one of the best modern adaptations of classic literature—which, within the teen film genre from the 1990s and early 2000s, is pretty good. In Clueless, Amy Heckerling and company (including costume designer Mona May) redefined how we remember the 1990s. From the dialogue to the fashion, the film is at once a time capsule of the absolute height of what 1990s culture was aspiring to be, but is also the major factor in the creation of that cultural memory.

But it’s more than just that—Clueless is also incredibly fun. It does all the things a memorable teen film should. I talked about it a lot last year, while I was writing about teen films all year, and what’s so eternal about Clueless (and about Jane Austen’s novel Emma on which the story is based) is that its a film that plays with the teen film trope of makeovers, but does you one better. “A makeover of the soul,” Cher calls it, and I think that is what makes the film endure well past when something as aesthetically pleasing as Clueless might expire. It’s the whole package, and it will never die. 

Howl’s Moving Castle (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)

For fans of Hayao Miyazaki movies it can often be very contentious to talk about your “favorite” of his films. He’s made so many amazing ones that how can you choose? There are some that come entirely from his own mind, some that are continuations of very famous stories, and then there’s Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’s children’s fantasy novel of the same name. I will eventually read this book, and potentially the second and the third in the series, but when I saw the English release of this film in theaters in 2004, I was shell shocked. 

The animation is beautiful, that’s a given, but I was taken by the characters. Even more so than my other favorite Studio Ghibli films, like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke, the existence of the characters that inhabited Howl’s Moving Castle was a type of writing that I would aspire to in my own work. As well as the kind of writing I would hope to find in the works I consumed after it. But nothing ever quite hits the same as Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer. Plus, the moving castle? That shit rules and now I have earrings of it—which I’m very excited about.

Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

As the newest film on this list, I cannot express the kind of impact Parasite actually had on me. It was an unmatched theatrical experience, despite there being horrid technical sound issues in the theater I saw it in. By the end of the movie, I’d forgotten all about any issues because the film is just that engrossing and all consuming. Of all the, actually quite good, films about class from 2019, Parasite is simply the best one. It’s dark, funny, emotionally brutal, physically brutal, and it’s tied together by some of the greatest performances of the year. Not to mention that the film is stunning. Between the direction, shot composition, and the lighting, Parasite uses all of the great elements of film, as a medium, to play with all its different tones and take you to unexpected, but inevitable, ends.

Pride & Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright, 2005)

Okay, maybe I just love Jane Austen adaptations. It’s a strong possibility! But nothing has ever been quite as romantic as the 2005 Pride & Prejudice. There’s something to be said about the romantic interests in Austen’s novels growing and changing as she wrote and that, as one of the first ones, Mr. Darcy is a kind of “immature” romance. But I can’t imagine a world where I would ever actually care about that, because it’s not like saying that means it isn’t a worthy romance at all—it’s just different from the more adult romances of Austen’s later career. 

And anyway, Mr. Darcy, especially played by Matthew Macfadyen, is a dreamboat. The film is beautifully shot, it’s perhaps the most stunning on this little list of mine, and the music is to die for (and to listen to for the rest of your days), but the little changes in plotting and focus within the story feels like a fever dream, in the best kind of way. To watch this film is to feel as though you are falling in love—hazy, messy, distracting love. I will never tire of it, I don’t think I could. 

School of Rock (dir. Richard Linklater, 2003)

Richard Linklater has made many amazing movies. This is the best one. The script, written by Mike White, is absolutely hilarious and the plotting is smart and fun. It has edged itself into my very soul. However, if anyone other than Jack Black played the lead in this film, I doubt it would have been quite as successful, nor would it have had the lasting legacy School of Rock presently has. The film plays all the right cords with perfect pitch as it moves through the plot and character development. The music rules and while the kids don’t win the Battle of the Bands, the crowd ultimately wants to see more of them. They win without winning, because that’s how life works sometimes. 

Also, like, there’s no denying that Jack Black is hot. (We are a lesser society for not making Jack Black the romantic lead in more movies because oh my fucking god.) He's hot, he’s funny, he’s a great musician. The vibes of this film, and the character dynamics held within, have been the dream of many filmmakers after it—but no one ever managed the whole thing like Linklater. 

The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

It should come as no surprise that The Seventh Seal was also a film I watched during a college class. A philosophy of religion class that was taught entirely through film—college was very fun, actually! The iconography of this film, alone, is legendary. From the often parodied image of Death playing chess (and even the general aesthetic look of Death), to the Danse Macabre at the end of the film. Nothing but stunning images in beautifully contrasted black and white on screen. The chaptered nature of the storytelling makes it feel like the best adaptation of the story tradition of The Canterbury Tales, and it reigns supreme of all the films set during the middle ages. 

The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010)

If we’re considering the films that absolutely altered my brain chemistry, then I think The Social Network is right at the top of the list. And this movie still fucking rules. Even for all the terrible things that have happened in, around, and because of Facebook, The Social Network remains the good thing. I was very annoying in college and wrote a few papers about this film, one of which I presented at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in 2013. (I also presented a paper on Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal in 2014 at NCUR because I’m deeply insufferable.)

But David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s internet creation myth was one of the first times that, as an adult, I was able to live in both the deranged fandom world of something… and in the academic world of it. It literally changed the way my brain functioned. But I think it also allows us to conceptualize the modern internet, especially a decade ago. Maybe Fincher and Sorkin couldn’t have imagined the nightmare we’re living in at this moment, but what they’re showcasing and building a narrative understanding for is what helped bring us to where we are now—and that’s certainly something.

Anyway, Andrew Garfield got absolutely snubbed at the Oscars that year. 

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988)

I’ve written about this supremely amazing film before, but I will never stop thinking about it. Even if the plot wasn’t top notch (it’s literally amazing), the innovation of Who Framed Roger Rabbit has never, and probably will never, be matched. They’ll never make a big budget commercial film like this ever again. Not in this way, anyway. It’s a technical marvel.

The team on the film invented their very own way to show off their immense talent. “Bumping the lamp” has become a phrase repeated often, but only ever really done on Who Framed Roger Rabbit because it’s the last film made in this way. It’s a literal moment in the film, where Eddie grabs Roger and bumps him into a hanging lamp. The lamp was an actual, physical, object in the space, and created ever shifting light for the rest of the shot. It was an insane move in order to show off their technical skills and sell Zemeckis’s illusion. It's a beautifully rendered blend of animation and live-action and it works wonderfully to make the film as believable as possible. Very good movie—can’t say that enough!