film essential
a mere top 26

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Here are my top 31 films (roughly), ranked in order of preference. The list has been limited to two films per director.
 
01. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
02. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
03. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
04. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
05. Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
06. The Third Man  (Carol Reed, 1949)
07. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
08. The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)
09. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
10. Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
11. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001)
12. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959)
13. L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
14. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
15. Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972)
16. Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994)
17. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofski, 2000)
18. The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
19. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
20. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
21. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly,1952)
22. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
23. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
24. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
25. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
26. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
27. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
28. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
29. Les Diaboliques (1954, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
30. It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
31. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
 
Of course, there are plenty of other films that I love, but they can be found to the left, be it in my favorite films of all time or in best of.
Bearing in mind that The Lord of the Rings was filmed simultaneously (all three films) and that the books were originally supposed to be solely one, the trilogy, as we call it, counts as one film. At least that's what I think.

Copyright                                                                          The Third M?n, 2003