The Personal Canon

What is the Personal Canon?
It’s a list of films that mean the most to me, for one reason or another. I don’t purport that these are necessarily the objectively greatest films of all time or the most important films. They’re not even ranked in order of favorite-ness, nor do I suggest that they’re better than a film that doesn’t appear here. Instead, these are my movies. In fact, you might call them perfect movies - at least, as I define perfection, because these movies don’t do anything wrong. They don’t miss a beat.

These are the films that reach the pinnacles and plumb the depths of the human condition. They’re films that represent my ideals of the best humanity and the aesthetic community have to offer, films I’d put in a time capsule or a Voyager-esque space probe. They’re films I would gladly introduce to my children, contenting myself in the meanwhile to stop and watch them any time they’re on television. They’re films that, if someone close to me hasn’t seen, I take it upon myself to share with them. I get angry if you haven’t seen these, sad for the wasted years you’ve gone without them. In most cases, I have very strong memories of seeing these movies for the first time, seeing them over and over, or coming to them with fresh eyes and realizing I missed something. Indeed, for one reason or another, the reason I love movies so much is this collection of movies.

THE LIST

Duck Soup (1933)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Citizen Kane (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Adam’s Rib (1949)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Stalag 17 (1953)
12 Angry Men (1957)

Inherit the Wind (1960)
Psycho (1960)
Goldfinger (1964)
Planet of the Apes (1968)

The Godfather (1972) / The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Star Wars (1977)
Superman (1978) / Superman II (1980)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Batman (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Uncle Buck (1989)

Goodfellas (1990)
The Rocketeer (1991)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Toy Story Trilogy (1995-2010)
Hamlet (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Mummy (1999)

American Psycho (2000)
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
John Q (2002)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy (2003-2008)
The Incredibles (2004)
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012)
The Departed (2006)
Stranger than Fiction (2006)
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Ratatouille (2007)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
Iron Man (2008)
Taken (2008)
Watchmen (2009)

Black Swan (2010)
Easy A (2010)
Inception (2010)
The Avengers (2012)
Skyfall (2012)
Man of Steel (2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Tomorrowland (2015)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
La La Land (2016)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Avengers: Infinity War / Endgame (2018-2019)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

(total 76)

Updates 
04.01.21 - Added Planet of the Apes (1968), John Q (2002), Watchmen (2009), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame (2018-2019), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019); removed Annie Hall (1977); total 76

10.15.19 - Added The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Uncle Buck (1989), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018); removed The Usual Suspects (1995); total 70

11.06.18 – Added Tomorrowland (2015); total 67

01.30.17 – Added La La Land (2016); total 66

09.19.16 – Added Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and At World’s End (2007) to the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy; added Burn After Reading (2008); total 65

09.05.16 – Added The Godfather, Part II (1974), Superman II (1980), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993); added Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010) to the Toy Story trilogy; added Air Force One (1997); added The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) to The Dark Knight trilogy; added Ratatouille (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Avengers (2012), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Captain America: Civil War (2016); removed Father of the Bride (1950)

06.27.16 – Collated Personal Canon with fifty films.

06.20.16 - 06.24.16 – Introduced fifty Personal Canon films, ten at a time.