Alphabetical Favorites, UPDATED!

by Ryland Walker Knight

Started by Blog Cabins, this meme made its way to Ed Howard and then to my man Keith Uhlich and now it makes its way to me. I went ahead and dropped a list in the comments at The House but I figured it's worth recapitulating here as well. This is fun, funny, dumb, wasteful and maybe (in the teeniest sliver of possibilities) illuminative: everything a blog should be, right?

Wow, that was a tough, goofy way to waste 30 minutes. Still, a funny (how many times will I use the same director? do I try to feign cool and pick esoterically? fuck that: don't I just go from the gut?) angle on the bigger picture I'm trying to offer over at this sister blog. Too many great movies start with the same letter. I, too, had to fudge things in spots. What I found toughest was discriminating between one of the biggest things ever and one of the smallest things ever so I went ahead and listed both; it's the only two-fer I gave, although I coulda given more, of course.

Here goes --

Andrei Rublev (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky)
Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis)
Le Cochon (1970, Jean Eustache)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)
Esther Kahn (2000, Arnaud Desplechin)
Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)
Groundhog Day (1993, Harold Ramis)
His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
INLAND EMPIRE (2006, David Lynch)
Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg)
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, John Cassavetes)
Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes)
Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky)
The New World (2005, 2006, 2008, Terrence Malick)
On Dangerous Ground (1952, Nicholas Ray)
Out 1 (1971, Jacques Rivette)
Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)
Quick Change (1990, Bill Murray)
Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Sans Soleil (1983, Chris Marker)
The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick)
Unfaithfully Yours (1948, Preston Sturges)
In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
Where does your hidden smile lie? (2001, Pedro Costa)
Xiao Wu (1997, Jia Zhang-Ke)
Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
Zelig (1983, Woody Allen)

Tell me yours, please, if you can or if you want to or if you like me enough to allow a preposition dangle at the end of a clause like that one before this one I'm trying to close off.