These films are not the best perhaps, or even the best 63 films I have seen, though they would be very close to that.

I simply laid them down without prior thought of ordering or listing them in any kind or categorisation of this or that.

The only change was to add Gosford Park by Robert Altman, and to do that I dropped Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! which should not be left out, but I kept Monsoon Wedding which I adored when I first saw it and still do.

So the filmmakers and films are all great and in no way am I listing them in order of best – first to worst. There are no second-best or best here. They are simply all magnificent for all their own reasons and appeared as I remembered them and wrote them down.

Tell me what you think – offer suggestions – i.e. if you wish to.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Milos Forman
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	George Roy Hill
The Last Picture Show	Peter Bogdanovich
Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola
Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock
King of Comedy	Martin Scorsese
Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese
The Good the Bad and the Ugly	Sergio Leone
Little Miss Sunshine	Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton
Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino
Reservoir Dogs	Quentin Tarantino
Casablanca	Michael Curtiz
Dog Day Afternoon	Sydney Lumet
The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola
Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood
2001 A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick
Amadeus	Milos Forman
Blade Runner	Ridley Scott
The Thing	John Carpenter
Ace in the Hole	Billy Wilder
The Verdict	Sydney Lumet
Network	Sydney Lumet
Sideways	Alexander Payne
The French Connection	William Friedkin
The Godfather II	Francis Ford Coppola
A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick
Paths of Glory	Stanley Kubrick
Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean
Easy Rider	Dennis Hopper
Chinatown	Roman Polanski
8 1/2	Federico Fellini
La Dolce Vita	Federico Fellini
The Conversation	Francis Ford Coppola
Out of Africa	Sydney Pollack
Annie Hall	Woody Allen
Hannah and Her Sisters	Woody Allen
Deconstructing Harry	Woody Allen
Broadway Danny Rose	Woody Allen
Amarcord	Federico Fellini
Day for Night (La Nuit américaine)	Francois Truffaut
La règle du jeu	Jean Renoir
Crimes and Misdemeanours	Woody Allen
The French Connection II	William Friedkin
Thelma and Louise	Ridley Scott
Gandhi	Richard Attenborough
American Graffiti	George Lucas
Atlantic City	Louis Malle
Das Boot	Wolfgang Petersen
Monsoon Wedding	Mira Nair
Gosford Park	Robert Altman
Witness	Peter Weir
Persona	Ingmar Bergman
Wild Strawberries	Ingmar Bergman
Cries and Whispers	Ingmar Bergman
Autumn Sonata	Ingmar Bergman
The Truman Show	Peter Weir
Fanny and Alexander	Ingmar Bergman
War and Peace	Sergei Bondarchuk
Yojimbo	Akira Kurosawa
Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa
Paris Texas	‎Wim Wenders
Schindler’s List	Steven Spielberg
Jaws	Steven Spielberg