Obligatory…
That is the painfully appropriate word to describe lists on the Internet. It’s a hand-in-glove, chicken-and-egg relationship wherein the World Wide Web was seemingly invented as a receptacle to house a preponderance of insight-bereft numberings of things. The Internet and lists go together as harmoniously as peanut butter and…a list of the best brands of peanut butter to eat while listening to Beyonce’s new album. Let me assure you right now, this list is no exception. Sure, it may at least have the dubious advantage of introspection, but all that really means is that it’s a listicle with delusions of grandeur, which is…arguably much worse.
Welcome to Top 40 at 40. This is the flagship column of the newly launched Junkfood Cinema website (ten years into the podcast’s existence because we are the pinnacle of professionalism). As I approach that all-too-harrowing fourth decade on planet Earth, one of the very few things that has remained constant is my love for film. Conversely, and maddeningly contradictory, few things have varied as wildly in my life as my love for film. Not the presence of that love, of course, but rather the titles and types of titles that have risen and fallen in their importance to me given my expanding taste and shifting perspectives over the years.
To wit, and pursuant to my obsession with Letterboxd, IMDB, and any other services that allow me to narcissistically catalog my preferences and obsessions, I decided to sit down and scientifically answer that notorious question that—while serving as completely harmless conversation to most people—completely vexes every cinephile: What is my favorite movie? Top 40 at 40, with apologies to the great Casey Kasem, will be my vain attempt to definitively establish the 40 most important films to me at this point in my life.
However, not satisfied with just one near-impossible endeavor, I also made the foolish decision to simultaneously construct two more lists. As previously stated, and devoid of anything resembling a revelation for anyone reading this, the movies that rank highest for a film fan at one point in their life may be at extreme odds with those that charted for them earlier in their film-watching journey. Therefore, grasping at self-reflection as well as the deluded intention of empirically solidifying my current list, I took a long, difficult look at the movies I used to love and formulated my Top 40 at 30…as well as my Top 40 at 20.
Here’s how this obnoxiously complicated debacle will play out. Invoking Mr. Kasem one more time (or possibly Drake), we will start from the bottom of the list(s) and, with each subsequent entry, work our way to the peak. The current entry, which is to say the entry from the Top 40 at 40 list, will receive the most analysis as to not only its quality and entertainment value but also its personal significance; the sum of those subjective variables should justify its position. Additionally, each post will feature capsular addendums indicating what film occupied that same numerical position for both thirty-year-old Brian and twenty-year-old Brian; the latter doubtlessly providing the greatest prevalence of, as my oldest incessantly remarks, “self-owns.”
I will also indicate those instances wherein a film on the Top 40 at 40 list also found itself on either of the chronologically preceding lists, and at what position it previously found purchase.
But what were the criteria by which the lists were drafted? How did you regulate age benchmarks? How can you account for the preferences of your decades-younger self when memory is so fallible? SHOW US YOUR RESEARCH METHODS OR GO STRAIGHT TO HELL! Whoa, readers! A little aggressive, wouldn’t you say? Basically in order for a movie to qualify for each list, I had to have seen that film by the time respective age was reached. In other words, for a movie to qualify for Top 30 at 30 means I had to have seen that film by the time I turned 30. Anything discovered after that would have percolated in my mind and left an impression as such that I still loved it deeply by the time the next criterion was reached. Does that adequately address all your questions, Senator? Is this cockamamie inquest concluded? I SAID GOOD DAY!!!
Sorry, now I’m being aggressive.
I hope you enjoy the results of this Herculean feat of self-indulgence, and that you lose only a modicum of the surely already minuscule respect you had for me as I reveal the woeful mistakes made in my nascent days of film appreciation. Looking at you, twenty-year-old Brian! Fucking punk.
When my soul is fully laid bare (Jesus, did I actually just write that goddamned sentence? Maybe it’s actually forty-year-old Brian who is the most insufferable), I will release for public consumption/ridicule all the Letterboxd lists that comprised the laughably-overly-involved research process for this column.
I also invite you, gentle reader, to contemplate and inventory your own film favorites and share them with me in comments as we progress. Because as we all know, art is only truly appreciated when it is arbitrarily quantified, right? Fuck me, my generation is broken.
