Edgar Wright’s handwritten list of the 40 greatest movies of all time
Everybody has their own list of favourite movies, and while trying to determine the single greatest motion picture ever made is an entirely subjective task with no definitive answer, Edgar Wright nonetheless threw his hat into the ring in trying to make that very call in exhaustive fashion.
The filmmaker scrawled a handwritten list of no less than 40 features spanning almost a century of cinema, which helped shine a light on the eclectic array of classics, cult favourites, and unheralded gem that helped shape Wright into the distinctive visualist and 21st century comedy figurehead that he became.
While the writer and director’s early trajectory was defined largely by comedy, each of his efforts carried a distinctly different tone and style. Shaun of the Dead was an ode to the zombie flick, Hot Fuzz paid tribute to the buddy cop action comedy, and The World’s End was an intergalactic adventure that balanced his comedic inclinations with Spielbergian spectacle.
Along very similar lines, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a comic book adaptation indebted to video game culture, Baby Driver delivered a high-octane chase thriller with every frame immaculately soundtracked, and Last Night in Soho indulged his fondness for the peak of the neon-lit psychological horror thriller.
Those influences and inspirations are reflective of many of the movies he selected on his list of 40 favourites, which ranges from Brian De Palma’s Carrie and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Ridley Scott’s Alien, by way of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup and even a couple of classic musicals.
Wright’s homework was assigned by Empire after the publication asked countless industry figures to submit their own curated lists as part of ranking the 100 finest films in the history of celluloid. However, the Cornetto Trilogy’s creative architect may have been left somewhat disappointed with the results.
Surprisingly, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came up trumps, with Wright’s highest-ranked selection being Raiders of the Lost Ark. Along with Goodfellas, this was the only one of his 40 that cracked Empire’s Top 10. As mentioned, though, it’s all down to personal preference.
Edgar Wright’s 40 favourite movies:
- Raising Arizona (Joel Coen, 1987)
- An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
- Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
- The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978)
- This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
- Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
- Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
- Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
- Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974)
- Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
- Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, 1987)
- Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
- Dames (Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley, 1934)
- Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
- Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
- The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980)
- Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
- The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973)
- Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
- The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
- Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
- Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
- Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen, 1969)
- Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)
- Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998)
- Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stacey Donen, 1952)
- Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino, 1974)
- The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
- Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
- The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1974)
- Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)
