I’ve made a top 100 film list. I’ve tried to avoid objectivity or the temptation to pick ‘greatest’ films – instead I’ve tried to capture a snapshot of my tastes right now. I’ve tried not to pay attention to what would be my usual choices or agonise too much over my selection. I use Flickchart, so I had a starting point of a list of pretty much all the films I’ve seen, theoretically in ranked order – but to make this list I’ve cherry-picked only the films that are currently on my mind or that, when I see their titles, I want to rewatch immediately. It’s a skewed list, featuring lots of films I’ve seen for the first time in the last year or so – if I made a similar list next year, I’d guess that more than a quarter of the titles would be different. It’ll be interesting to see whether e.g. A Cottage on Dartmoor or The Swimmer stay with me.

I’ve listed the films in chronological order, which reveals a surprise: 11 of the films in this list were released this century. It’s notable that most of these recent titles are very downbeat and slow-paced – I hadn’t quite realised this is so clearly a factor in my tastes in modern cinema.

The director who appears most is Hitchcock, predictably. There are three by: Ingmar Bergman, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Buñuel, F.W. Murnau and Nicholas Ray. There are two each by: Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, David Lynch, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Tourneur, Jerzy Skolimowski, Robert Bresson, Roman Polanski, Thomas Vinterberg, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Here’s the full list:

• Les Vampires (1915, Louis Feuillade)
• Nosferatu (1922, F.W. Murnau)
• Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
• The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)
• The General (1926, Buster Keaton)
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F.W. Murnau)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
• A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929, Anthony Asquith)
• Pandora’s Box (1929, Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
• The Blue Angel (1930, Josef von Sternberg)
• M (1931, Fritz Lang)
• Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
• Island of Lost Souls (1932, Erle C. Kenton)
• Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)
• Cleopatra (1934, Cecil B. DeMille)
• L’atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
• The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
• Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)
• Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston )
• In a Lonely Place (1950, Nicholas Ray)
• The Wages of Fear (1953, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
• Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Diabolique (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray)
• Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)
• A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)
• The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
• Night of the Demon (1957, Jacques Tourneur)
• The Abominable Snowman (1957, Val Guest)
• Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
• Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
• The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
• The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton)
• Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)
• Baron Prasil (1962, Karel Zeman)
• Knife in the Water (1962, Roman Polanski)
• Jason and the Argonauts (1963, Don Chaffey)
• Paranoiac (1963, Freddie Francis)
• The Silence (1963, Ingmar Bergman)
• Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
• Shock Corridor (1963, Samuel Fuller)
• Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, Byron Haskin)
• Diary of a Chambermaid (1964, Luis Buñuel)
• The Last Man on Earth (1964, Ubaldo Ragona)
• The Naked Prey (1965, Cornel Wilde)
• Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
• Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer)
• Cul-de-sac (1966, Roman Polanski)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)
• The Nanny (1966, Seth Holt)
• Belle de Jour (1967, Luis Buñuel)
• The Swimmer (1968, Frank Perry)
• Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner)
• Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero)
• If…. (1968, Lindsay Anderson)
• The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
• Deep End (1970, Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Duel (1971, Steven Spielberg)
• Wake in Fright (1971, Ted Kotcheff)
• Frenzy (1972, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky)
• The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
• Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)
• Scenes from a Marriage (1973, Ingmar Bergman)
• Don’t Look Now (1973, Nicolas Roeg)
• F for Fake (1973, Orson Welles)
• The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)
• The Godfather Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
• The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, Werner Herzog)
• Robin and Marian (1976, Richard Lester)
• That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Buñuel)
• The American Friend (1977, Wim Wenders)
• The Shout (1978, Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)
• Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
• Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders)
• The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg)
• Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)
• Withnail & I (1987, Bruce Robinson)
• The Vanishing (1988, George Sluizer)
• Barton Fink (1991, Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Cronos (1993, Guillermo del Toro)
• Irma Vep (1996, Olivier Assayas)
• Funny Games (1997, Michael Haneke)
• Festen (1998, Thomas Vinterberg)
• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, Anthony Minghella)
• In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-Wai)
• Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch)
• There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Certified Copy (2010, Abbas Kiarostami)
• Point Blank (2010, Fred Cavayé)
• Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols)
• Shame (2011, Steve McQueen)
• The Hunt (2012, Thomas Vinterberg)
• Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)
• Night Moves (2013, Kelly Reichardt)
• Force Majeure (2014, Ruben Östlund)