My 50 Favorite Films: Prep for the 2020 Edition

This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, which meant it was time to rediscover how to make Thanksgiving leftovers last for multiple meals, play more board games than usual, and set up the Christmas tree. But it was also Thanksgiving weekend on an even year, which meant time to start prepping for my biennial Favorite Films sort.

I’m a lifelong movie buff and have watched literally thousands of movies. Not all of them are good. Some of the good films are, nonetheless, not my favorite films. As I discuss elsewhere, I rank the films by the criteria of quality, watchability, and resonance.

The entire stack of films I sort through every few years numbers around 500 films or so. There’s usually something of a lag between when a film comes out and when we get to see it. No longer can I see every film when it first comes out in the theater (even more so this year) and I’m also no longer a film completist. This is one of the reasons I term this a list of “favorites” not a “best of.”

In truth, I try and start forming that list of 500 in October, so that if there are films that have been in the Favorite 50 that I know I haven’t seen in a while or others that I think I need to revisit, I have time to rewatch them. As with the new films, I’d rate this as rigorous, but not precise — and so another reason I term these favorites and not a “best of.”

Here are films I’ve either watched anew or for the first time in a long time and made sure were in the sort as part of the 500-odd films:

• Ad Astra
• Angel Has Fallen
• Annihilation
• Avengers: Endgame
• Battle: Los Angeles
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• The Black Hole
• Black Sea
• The Black Stallion
• Captain Marvel
• The Death of Stalin
• Deep Impact
• Den of Thieves
• Duma
• The Equalizer 2
• Extraction (2015)
• Extraction (2020)
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• The Foreigner (2017)
• Frozen II
• Glory
• That movie with Gary Oldman as an Elvis impersonator
• Hamilton (it counts. I do have the votes.)
• Hidden Figures
• The Highwaymen
• Hoosiers
• Hotel Artemis
• The Impossible
• Isle of Dogs (2018)
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
• Klaus
• Knives Out
• The Lion King (1994)
• The Little Prince (2015)
• Little Women (2019)
• Macross: Do You Remember Love?
• Miracle
• Mission Impossible: Fallout
• Molly’s Game
• 1917
• The Old Guard
• Operation Red Sea
• On the Basis of Sex
• Onward
• Outbreak
• Over the Moon
• A Quiet Place
• The Raid: Redemption
• RBG
• Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
• Salt
• The Signal (2014)
• 6 Underground
• Sleeping Beauty (1959)
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Snowpiercer
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
• Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
• Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
• The Story of Robin Hood
• The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
• Total Recall (1990)
• Tremors
• Tremors 2: Electric Graboid Boogaloo
• Triple Frontier
• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• 12 Angry Men (1997)
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• The Two Jakes
• United 93
• The Velocipastor
• The Willoughbys

Yes, as in previous years, some of these films will about as far as the character who “just goes to check out that noise” in a creature feature, but hey, somebody’s gotta don the red shirt.

Expect this year’s list closer to Yule.