30 Films: A Quarantine Birthday Celebration
Being on the verge of my 30th Birthday (yup, the big 3-0) I cannot help but reminisce about all of the films that have had such a major impact upon my life… What better way to celebrate (since the pandemic has put a massive damper on properly celebrating such a major milestone) than with a list of the 30 most influential films that have made me who I am today?
Listed below are just some of my all-time favorite films, in chronological order based upon their release dates. Some of these movies I have loved since being really little (I’m talking toddler-aged y’all), others are more recent discoveries, but all have left such a lasting impression upon me that I cannot imagine my world without them. In concocting this list, I came across plenty of honorable mentions that just didn’t quite make the cut, but perhaps they’ll make an appearance in the next decade (when I turn 40?!)?
I can safely say that these are all films that I have watched again and again, sometime on repeat, and often to the surprise of my mum. For me, this list would constitute those movies that I’d be happy to be stranded on a deserted island with… Just give me a portable DVD player, a lifetime supply of batteries, these 30 films, and I would probably be perfectly fine…
1) Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang)
2) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, dir. David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen)
3) Bringing Up Baby (1938, dir. Howard Hawks)
4) Hold That Ghost (1941, dir. Arthur Lubin)
5) Holiday Inn (1942, dir. Mark Sandrich)
6) I Married A Witch (1942, dir. René Clair)
7) La Belle et la Bête (1946, dir. Jean Cocteau)
8) 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953, dir. Roy Rowland)
9) Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
10) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954, dir. Stanley Donen)
11) Funny Face (1957, dir. Stanley Donen)
12) Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder)
13) North by Northwest (1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
14) Pillow Talk (1959, dir. Michael Gordon)
15) Help! (1965, dir. Richard Lester)
16) True Grit (1969, dir. Henry Hathaway)
17) Star Wars (aka. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, 1977, dir. George Lucas)
18) Candleshoe (1977, dir. Norman Tokar)
19) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, dir. Steven Spielberg)
20) The Goonies (1985, dir. Richard Donner)
21) Labyrinth (1986, dir. Jim Henson)
22) The Next Karate Kid (aka. The Karate Kid Part IV, 1994, dir. Christopher Cain)
23) Ever After (aka. Ever After: A Cinderella Story, 1998, dir. Andy Tennant)
24) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999, dir. Gil Junger)
25) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999, dir. Michael Hoffman)
26) Shanghai Noon (2000, dir. Tom Dey)
27) Bend It Like Beckham (2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha)
28) The Importance of Being Earnest (2002, dir. Oliver Parker)
29) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, dir. Gore Verbinski)
30) The Holiday (2006, dir. Nancy Meyers)
What do you think of my top 30 films? How many of these movies have you seen? What movies do you cherish and could never live without? Share your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget the watch our October Film Club Pick: Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 satire, The Great Dictator!
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Crane
