My 50 Favorite Films: Prep for the 2022 Edition

Another Thanksgiving weekend has past, which for our family meant seeing how many meals the Thanksgiving leftovers would last, how many board games could be played, and who wanted to put what ornament on the Christmas tree. But it was also Thanksgiving weekend on an even year, which means it was 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:

You know some of these films won’t get very far, don’t you? Every year, hundreds of films don’t make the first cut. But hey, somebody’s gotta don the red shirt.

Expect this year’s list right around Yule.