So what are your favorite movies?
That's a question I get all the time when people hear what I do for a living.
This story is my answer.
I've seen more than 4,500 movies, including some 1,600 that I've reviewed in my eight years as a Star critic. The more I watch, the more I realize I haven't seen.
I'm always on the lookout for great movies. If anyone tells me their favorite film, I almost reflexively add it to my Netflix queue. For several months, my queue was topped out at 500 films. I've managed to work it down to fewer than 450, where it generally hovers.
For this issue of Caliente, I've sifted through my movie memories to put together a list of my 100 favorites. None of them tastes like medicine. All are films that infect me like a joyful mind-virus I want to spread to others.
People are also reading…
These are the films that have gone beyond art to become a part of my soul — movies I've seen over and over again, never tiring of them. When I need a pick-me-up, I can pop in "Rocky" or "The Karate Kid" for inspiration, and when I'm feeling lazy I watch "Ikiru" and emerge with a refreshed spirit.
And when I just want to laugh I can go to "Dumb & Dumber," "Clerks" or "Tommy Boy."
I believe there's significant artistic value in every movie on my list, even the sillier selections, such as "Road House" or "Con Air." Brilliance, even if it was created by accident, should not be downplayed.
I've reviewed all the movies on the list for the Star — some when they were first released and others that were available for rental.
I hope you'll find a few gems here you've never heard of, or maybe give a second look to some you may have dismissed.
I'm looking forward to your reactions — angry, confused, sympathetic or whatever — in the comments section online. We'll run some of your feedback in next week's Caliente.
(1989) Forget Chuck Norris. Patrick Swayze proves to be the ultimate He-Man caricature as a bad-boy bar bouncer Dalton.
(1985) Speaking of He-Man, his lone feature-length animated adventure is a nostalgic trip to bliss.
98. "Weird Science"
(1985) The most hilariously wicked and subversive of John Hughes' teen comedies.
97. "Napoleon Dynamite"
(2004) A microbudget comedy about a small-town goofball that endures after its pop-culture hip factor has cooled.
(1934) This is the romantic comedy all others draw from. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are one of the great bickering screen couples.
(1962) The presence of John Wayne and James Stewart together would be enough to make for an unforgettable Western, and the film has a twist-filled script that deconstructs the nature of heroism.
(1982) Based on Cameron Crowe's breathtakingly accurate and comical hands-on research — he masqueraded as a high school student to pen a novel on which he based his script — the movie boasts Sean Penn's greatest performance.
(1964) Such a cool, fitting title. Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick prove that the one way to strike back against the Grim Reaper is to laugh in his face.
92. "Chasing Amy"
(1997) Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and Joey Lauren Adams make up an unlikely love triangle in this bittersweet, insightful romantic comedy that deals with emotional maturity and Kinsey-scale sexuality.
(1952) A stinging look at poverty from Italian master Vittorio De Sica, about a godd-hearted, destitute man who plunges into homelessness and worries how his dog will cope with life once he's gone.
(1987) In one of action great Sylvester Stallone's many appearances on this list, he plays a trucker who must arm-wrestle his way to the respect of his estranged son. I could watch this one every week.
(2008) I wouldn't be surprised to see this inspirational, newly crowned best-picture-Oscar winner shoot up my chart as the years pass.
(1989) Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal play mismatched friends who take years to learn what everyone around them knows — that they were meant for each other.
(1993) Bill Murray plays a sourpuss weatherman forced to live the same day over and over again, in this deep, philosophical drama that teaches you life is meant to be taken one day at a time.
(1941) In the film that would inspire "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Joel McCrea plays a filmmaker who masquerades as a bum to understand the human condition. The incomparable Veronica Lake is along for the ride.
(2000) Prescient about the current financial crisis. Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck and Giovanni Ribisi play scamming Wall Street types who chase their greed to ruin.
(1988) Bruce Willis carved out a gritty, unforgettable screen persona he'd later run into the ground. But, boy, did John McClane romp 'em in '88.
(1980) Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese team for several astounding films, including this stylish black-and-white biopic on self-destructive boxer Jake La Motta.
(1995) Tapping a then under-the-radar George Clooney, writer Quentin Tarantino and director Robert Rodriguez team for a notoriously edgy and witty vampire crime thriller.
(1992) Many hail Bruce Campbell's "Evil Dead II" as the epitome of horror comedy, but it's here — the third film in the series — where Campbell truly finds his stroke as a cocky zombie slayer.
(1952) Akira Kurosawa never made another film that came close to the brilliance of this, an introspective story about a dying, middle-age office drone determined to make something of his life before he passes away.
(1975) Jack Nicholson truly channeled the anti-authority Zeitgeist of the '70s and was mesmerizing as a criminal conman locked up in an insane asylum.
(1994) The best Stephen King adaptations seem to come from emotionally charged, non-horror short stories, and this tale of a falsely imprisoned man is haunting in ways that have nothing to do with the supernatural.
(2006) After decades of bridesmaidhood, this was the film that finally landed Scorsese his Oscar. Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are at their toughest in this tale of intertwined Boston cops and criminals.
76. "Twelve Angry Men"
(1957) Henry Fonda spearheads a stirring tribute to the legal concept of "reasonable doubt" by standing up for his morals against bitter fellow jurors who just want to go through the motions and get on with their lives.
(2007) The Coen brothers adapt Cormac McCarthy's novel into an impossibly engrossing crime drama, anchored by stunning performances by Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones.
(1939) Nearly every scene of the movie is iconic. This is one of the few films that seems to have been engraved into our collective DNA over the decades. Bliss from beginning to end.
(2008) The comic-book epic, featuring the penetrating performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, actually benefits from being dissed from the best-picture race by the Academy. The lack of approval by "the man" gives it a little more street cred.
(1992) David Mamet's caustic script gives us a profanity-spewing Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin and Alan Arkin. Four-letter poetry.
(1954) A traveling strongman (Anthony Quinn) buys a young woman from her poor mother to take with him on the road, and the travelers form an uneasy bond. Directed by Federico Fellini, the tale is filled with bittersweet heartbreak.
70. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
(2004) Few films explore the concepts of love and emotional memory with such shiver-inducing depth. Jim Carrey plays a lovelorn guy who pays to have the memories of his ex erased, but during the procedure realizes he's made a mistake and tries to hold on.
(1969) Paul Newman and Robert Redford turn the Western on its head with this banter-filled, action-packed tale of male bonding.
(1986) Here's King again, this time providing the basis for a nostalgic tale of childhood friendship and danger. It ends with the best final line of any movie, typed on the screen: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
(1997) An eye-gouging glimpse into the gilded world of 1970s porn. Idealism and cynicism clash and love bubbles amid the grotesquely exploitative sex acts.
(2006) A tremendously thrilling action flick with flawlessly integrated computer special effects and a story that's as inspirational as a second-half comeback by your favorite sports team.
(2006) Stallone goes back to the well for a movie that re-energized his tired persona and served as a requiem for the fall of a once great sport.
(1959) James Stewart takes on a seemingly impossible case involving a rape and murder. Otto Preminger never directed a more pulse-pounding film.
(1933) Greta Garbo was a fascinating, almost mythic screen persona who often fell into lackluster movies during the sound era. But she reaches her potential by playing the sexually and emotionally ambiguous Swedish monarch who ascended to the throne at age 5.
(1962) As the untouchable Atticus Finch, Gregory Peck struck his blow for the civil rights movement, with his character who boldly defends an unfairly accused black man in the Deep South.
(1931) Austrian Fritz Lang, a master of German Expressionism, tells a sinister story of mob justice and unchecked paranoia, spun around a murderer who stalks the streets.
(1997) As over-the-top as an action movie can get while still retaining emotional pull. I get the sense that Nicolas Cage has starred in so many awful films since then because he's been attempting to recapture the note of sublime, pseudo-serious mayhem he found here.
(1995) Before Ice Cube sold himself out as a dopey kiddie-flick clown, he gave us this ghetto-fabulous comedy about the joy of suspended adolescence amid the despair of poverty and violence.
(1979) Richard Adams' superb novel about talking rabbits who make an Exodus-style migration to a new home is only slightly better than this stunning animated adaptation.
(1983) Al Pacino plays an audaciously egotistical drug-dealing Cuban immigrant in this infectiously lovable shoot-em-up. And his "little friend" is one of the more distinctive supporting actors in movie history.
(1954) Marlon Brando is an animal in this downbeat, dockyards-set morality play. His performances here and in "A Streetcar Named Desire" changed movie acting forever.
(1941) It's overrated, sure, and respected more for its impact than continuing relevance. But it's still an engrossing watch.
(1932) Made in an era of questionable filmmaking ethics, the movie exploits its cast of circus performers. But it also tells a chilling story of tolerance and fear of "the others."
(2000) Director Darren Aronofsky brings a flashy style to probe inside the heads of drug addicts played by Jared Leto, Ellen Burstyn and Jennifer Connelly. You need detox once the end credits roll.
(1971) A trippy, unapologetically evil kiddie flick meant to scare brats straight. Those Oompa-Loompas don't mess around.
(1974) Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder join forces to make a wicked satire of the old "Frankenstein" films. The humor sharpens with age.
(1982) People think "Rambo" and tend to refer to the nonsensical mayhem of the sequels. But the disgruntled war vet's first outing was a poignant and gripping tale of alienation.
(1968) Stanley Kubrick's commanding vision was never more sharp and ethereal than it was here, in this off-the-rails sci-fi extravaganza that still feels futuristic long after the year in the title.
(1998) Norm MacDonald is an underappreciated talent who has only twice found the proper vehicles for his sardonic humor: "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live" and this riotous comedy, in which he starts a revenge-for-hire business.
(1999) I believe the head-scratching best-picture nomination for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was a long-overdue make-up gesture for respecting director David Fincher and actor Brad Pitt's work in this tremendous deconstruction of anarchy.
(1995) This serpentine, unpredictable crime flick is never as strong as it was the first time you watched it, unaware of Keyser Söze's identity. But even robbed of a sense of surprise, it still holds up.
(1997) I couldn't stand this bizarre Coen brothers comedy at first, but a roommate watched it almost every day and eventually it wore me down. The more times you watch, the more ways the movie finds to crack you up.
(1960) Billy Wilder made an astounding number of brilliant films. This Jack Lemmon/Shirley MacLaine opus about love blooming amid corporate suffocation predates "Office Space."
(1956) John Wayne ushered in the catchphrase of all catchphrases — "That'll be the day" — which he repeats again and again in this Western, which slyly undermines racist conventions rampant in the genre at the time.
(1931) James Cagney plays a rough-hewn gangster who rises and falls with equal speed. The famous scene from the movie is the jaw-dropper in which Cagney shoves a grapefruit into Mae Clark's face.
(1967) Dustin Hoffman embodies the entirety of callow, can't-hardly-wait youths who yearn to find their place in a world they sort of despise.
(1976) Scorsese and De Niro paint a dark portrait of a Vietnam vet with heroic longings whose reality and perception don't quite match.
(1960) Academics say Alfred Hitchcock made the movie more as a send-up of horror clichés than an honest attempt at a scary movie. It works on both levels, thanks much to the incomparable Anthony Perkins.
(1977) Woody Allen's magnum opus on the foibles of relationships and the elusiveness of romance. He has never recaptured the magic of this one, but, then, neither has anyone else.
(1971) Part harrowing tale of delinquents in an urban dystopia, part frightening analysis of mainstream society's callous ways of dealing with its problems, Kubrick's spine-tingler is thoroughly nerve-racking.
36. "Midnight Cowboy"
(1969) Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight play a pair of losers who form an evolving bond amid the mean streets of New York: At times they are pim
prostitute, mentor/acolyte and sickling/caretaker. But through it all they're battered soulmates.
(1942) There's no screenplay out there with more quotable lines. And nobody could speak them like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
(1963) Fellini metaphorically turned the camera on himself, stepping back to survey his career successes, failures, longings and lusts. It's a brave and fascinating look inside one of the most original filmmaking minds.
(1995) Chris Farley and David Spade were better together than Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis all put together. This laugh-till-you-cry comedy, along with the nearly as funny "Black Sheep," prove that bold statement true.
(1977) Remember back when George Lucas was considered a force of good rather than indifferent greed? Neither do I, but this one is evidence that there was indeed such a time.
(1997) Ben Affleck and Matt Damon came seemingly from out of nowhere to instant fame and screenwriting Oscar success with this heartwarming fable about unrecognized genius.
(1994) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play young travelers who meet on a train and spend one evening together in Vienna. The romance is mostly dialogue, little action, and all heart.
(1946) You don't just watch Frank Capra's holiday hallmark, you relive it. It plays as though it's projected through dreams rather than celluloid.
(1987) I've never spoken with anyone who's seen this pre-"Shrek" loving mockery of fairy-tale conventions and doesn't love it. With his small but memorable role, Andre the Giant certainly gave us something to remember him by.
(2002) In a full-on blast of college-set black humor, director Roger Avary expertly uses pop music to ironically comment on his themes.
26. "Go"
(1999) The film whizzes by in such a blur that once it's over it feels as though no more than a few minutes have passed. It's a "Pulp Fiction"-like blend of interconnected crime and love tales, with the exquisite Sarah Polley at the center as a grocery-store bagger who attempts to become a drug dealer.
(1997) Before Dave Chappelle shot to fame with his Comedy Central show and flamed out, he was a young, hungry comic who put together an impossibly funny pot comedy that too few people know and respect.
(1994) "Pulp" is Tarantino for beginners. A brilliant and influential film, but just the tip of his iceberg of talent.
(1980) The darkest and best of the "Star Wars" flicks, with a depressing ending and a minimum of the juvenile stupidity that drags down some of the other films in the series.
(1993) Few can match the intellectually tinged Texas slacker dialogue writer/director Richard Linklater infuses into his films. This seminal high school flick was Matthew McConaughey's coming-out party, and by far his best performance to date.
(1994) Adam Sandler is as popular now as ever, but his current films are watered-down shadows of his 1990s brilliance. He plays a fitting role into his one — as an immature guy in his 20s who must repeat grade school.
(1950) It's Wilder's greatest film, which is saying something. Even back in 1950, Hollywood-types felt heavy nostalgia for what came before, and the drama encapsulates the brutality of the studio system.
(1999) Director Mike Judge parlayed his social-satire success with "Beavis and Butt-Head" into a biting evisceration of the office drone's despair.
(1995) A box office bomb, writer/director Kevin Smith's follow-up to the unforgettable "Clerks" is nearly as funny. Jason Lee delivers the greatest comedic performance I've seen.
(2007) This is the only musical I've seen to have pulled off sung dialogue, making it charming rather than filling me with rage. A beautiful love story with fantastic original music.
(1984) It saddens me that this is being remade — as if the rotten sequels hadn't tarnished the movie enough. The original is a priceless underdog drama, and Pat Morita deserved to win the supporting-actor Oscar.
(1993) Tony Scott directed this drug-running romance, but Tarantino's script provided all the life. Take a look at the impossibly wonderful cast, all of whom were in peak form.
(1994) Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels play blithering idiots whose sole purpose in life is to make you spend 107 minutes rupturing your spleen with laughter.
(1972, 1974) Every gangland epic strives for the dignified, operatic fury of the first two "Godfather" films, which shook Hollywood's core and redefined what was possible with the medium.
12. "Sideways"
(2004) Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti are resplendent as mismatched pals, plagued by shortcomings in life, on a bachelor-party trip through wine country.
(1990) Scorsese hurdled the bar set by "The Godfather" films with a ferocious tale of a mob turncoat played by Ray Liotta. De Niro and Joe Pesci are even more amazing in this film than they were in "Raging Bull" and "Casino."
(1999) A startlingly deep sci-fi film with groundbreaking special effects that seem clichéd today only because they were copied into oblivion. Somehow the movie managed to turn the bumbling Keanu Reeves into the epitome of cool, at least for a few years.
(2004) Operates a level beyond predecessor "Before Sunrise" because it operates on a level beyond. It reunites Hawke and Delpy, who meet in Paris 10 years after their one-night fling, recognizing they've ruined each other's lives by letting their connection fade away.
8. "Donnie Darko"
(2001) The movie comes close to making sense but doesn't quite get there, which is exactly what makes it fun to watch because there's so much to argue over. A brain-teasing tale of time travel and interdimensional visitors, mixed with heart-aching high school comedy and crackling dialogue.
7. "Kill Bill Vol. 1"
(2003) Tarantino took off any filter and spilled his geeky, kung fu flick-addled brain onto the screen for an epiphany of comedic chop socky vengeance. Tarantino is the one director who truly knows how to use Uma Thurman.
(1976) Many deride the Academy for choosing "Rocky" over "Taxi Driver" for best picture, but watch the films back-to-back and then ask yourself which one you'd rather watch again. For me it's "Rocky" every time.
(1989) This is the only movie that can make me sob like a baby every single time I watch it. At three different points!
(1992) Tarantino's first theatrically released film is also his best, as well as one of the greatest in history. You sense his desperation to succeed in every caustic word the hard-edged diamond thieves utter in the film.
(1994) Just as Tarantino's first was his best, the same is true of Kevin Smith. There's something about hunger and fear of lifelong failure that drive geniuses to their peak and beyond. Smith's black-and-white, amateurishly filmed existential tale of a self-hating convenience-store worker is the funniest movie I've seen.
(1996) This male-centric romantic comedy was my favorite movie for five years, and I was sure I'd never see anything close to it. Best pals Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn do the Affleck-Damon "overnight success" act one better.
(2001) I didn't choose "Waking Life" as my favorite. It ran off with my unconditional love. I watch the movie — an impressionistically animated string of illuminating philosophical discussions from all walks of life — several times a year and feel as though I'm barely cracking the surface of what it has to offer.
Live online chat
Phil Villarreal participated in a live chat on StarNet on March 5, 2009 about his top 100 list. Go to azstarnet.com/special/moviechat to read the transcript.
