The latest fun film blogging meme doing the rounds is the Alphabetical Favorites list, picking 26 films going from A to Z. It’s something of a challenge, and one involving creativity and the need to accept compromise, but here goes anyway…

Firstly, I should lay out my own personal parameters for this list. It should be noted that I do not have a list of every film I have ever watched, nor do I have a hard and fast list of favorite films. As a result, the films selected below are pretty much off the cuff, and not an empirical group in any sense. Ultimately, the criterion I used to choose the titles below was not so much their “greatness” or place in the canon, but rather the desire I felt to watch them again. Immediately. And, in many cases, I surprised myself by what I chose.

Andrei Rublev – Andrei Takovsky, 1966
Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) – Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
Chinatown – Roman Polanski, 1974
Days of Heaven – Terrence Malick, 1978
Eureka - Shinji Aoyama, 2000
Finally, Lillian and Dan - Mike Gibisser, 1999
George Washington – David Gordon Green, 2000
Hana-bi (Fireworks) – Takeshi Kitano, 1997
ivansxtc – Bernard Rose, 2000
julien donkey-boy – Harmony Korine, 1999
Klute – Alan J. Pakula, 1971
L.A. Confidential – Curtis Hanson, 1997
M - Fritz Lang, 1931
The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton, 1955
Oldboy - Park Chan-wook, 2003
Primer - Shane Carruth, 2004
Quills – Phil Kaufman, 2000
Reconstruction – Christoffer Boe, 2003
Simple Men – Hal Hartley, 1992
The Town is Quiet (La Ville Est Tranquille) – Robert Guédiguian, 2000
Under the Sand (Sous Le Sable) – François Ozon, 2000
The Vanishing (Spoorloos) – George Sluizer, 1988
The Warrior – Asif Kapadia, 2001
X-Men – Bryan Singer, 2000
You Can’t Take It With You – Frank Capra, 1938
Zamani Barayé Masti Asbha (A Time for Drunken Horses) - Bahman Ghobadi, 2000

Here are some more examples:

Karina Longworth @ SpoutBlog
Vinyl Is Heavy
The Film Doctor
Only the Cinema

Also I’d be interested in reading your comments or your own lists below.

[UPDATE] A full list of the over 100 Alphabet meme lists is available at Blog Cabins.