List by Adam Cook Patron
Best vs. Favourite
In the past couple of weeks, thanks to the publication of Sight & Sound’s own exhaustive best of list, there has been a lot of critical attention on what constitutes the best films and how ‘best’ should be judged. Personally I prefer to try and keep best and favourite separate. A favourite list is obviously a deeply personal and subjective list, one in which a guilty pleasure has a right to be included as much as a widely regarded classic. ‘Best’, however, is harder to pin down. It attempts to rationalise and provide objective fact to something that is still a largely subjective pursuit. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t identify those films that are considered amongst the best in the medium; those films that broke new ground, changed cinema forever and have been influencing filmmakers (and therefore audiences, even if it is by proxy) ever since.
Therefore I thought it might be an interesting experiment to see how close an individual’s objective Best list compares with their subjective Favourite top five. So, to play along please list five films you consider the best (i.e. those that are deemed important and that are objectively excellent) and five of your personal favourites (i.e. the ones you hold dear to your heart irrespective of quality or critical importance). I will alter the list accordingly.
Over to you.
*Because of the one film per list constraint can you please create your own Best vs. Favourite list and I will add the link address to this opening post*
Josh Keown's list
Richard Trondsen's list
DriveFiction19's list
Teetz's list
Evan's list
Ethan D's list
Dimitri Fiani's list
Adam Lowndes' list
Jacob Olsen's list
Unnikrishnan's list
Dirk Hasselman's list
Pablo Antelo's list
Sunny's list
Ryan's list
Liam Fogarty's list
Owen Hughes' list
Ron's list
Tom Walsh's list
Travis Lytle's list
Gumby77's list
Hollie Horror's list
Mithil Bhoras' list
ACEZ's list
Steve Grzesiak's list
Bizarre_eye's list
Sack Person's list
Added. I'm sure there are probably loads of classics not mentioned although I'm not surprised Fellini is only mentioned a few times.
Here's mine!
Done.
Not sure I like this recent trend of Letterboxd bumping any list/review that has been edited onto the activity stream. I'm sure it never used to do that.
No it didn't, but it's at least reminded me to make my own list, so it may not be too bad!
There doesn't seem to be a way to do anything about the reviews, but I've been trying to stop my edited lists going into the newsfeed by making them private, editing, and then afterwards pressing "make public" again on the display page. It's worked so far.
@Bizarre_eye: Thanks for the list, I've added it to the opening.
@Antonomasia: Thanks for the suggestion, it is a bit long winded but does solve the problem for the lists.
@Adam - No problem, it's a great idea for a list. Very interesting to see how the best and faourites differ between everyone.
I'm trying this Best vs Favourite exercise, but I found I was looking specifically for films which struck me as technically brilliant but left me emotionally cold or unsettled. (So far: Le Mepris, Blade Runner and Eraserhead.) But that's not necessarily the idea, is it?
The Seventh Seal, for instance, would be in my top ten favourites and best films.
I voted for one in the 'Best' list that I could find no fault, or almost no faults, with at all and that were superior in almost everything they did. I was surprised with what I went for, actually.
Here is mine, just in case someone cares.
letterboxd.com/sackperson/list/best-vs-favourite/