Warning, a somewhat longwinded post ahead.
I disagree. Lists help show the make-up of every individual stating his/her respective list. Lists show what movies are in your DNA. I do tend to roll my eyes at people who seemingly copy and paste the Top 10 AFI films as their own "favorites" (even when they throw in a respectable popcorn movie like Raiders or something toward the top to individualize it just a hair to maintain credibility.) Are there people who simply like the "Top 50 movies ever made?" Sure, but the often accompanying "snobbery" always seems to indicate a deeper need to impress people rather than opening up with individual preferences. But I digress.
Great list, pretty much from top to bottom IMO. What I've come to realize is that the movies that tend to dominate my lists were those where I had the greatest visceral reaction while watching them combined with actual filmmaking quality. Usual the visceral reaction would have been during the first viewing, but not always.
I'll never forget the impact of seeing RoboCop and Terminator 2 in the theaters for the first time. NEVER. But as I've said in other threads I ended up not finding that T2 had enough quality to match up with the emotional impact and it therefore has diminished for me over the years which has not been the case with RoboCop.
The Terminator on the other hand I enjoyed watching on pan and scan VHS in the 80's as cheap sci-fi schlock until I really analyzed it several years later and thought, holy crap, this is genius. So it didn't imprint on me on day 1 like other favorites but the quality is undeniable IMO.
But those magic movies that were great AND fulfilled an intense desire for that special desire to be captivated and held in awe for two hours, either out of the blue or after much anticipation, those are the ones that always seem to make up my top 25. Not Citizen Kane, or The Wizard of Oz (a little too age specific, if I was 7 forever this would no doubt still be close to the top,) or The Godfather or Gone with the Wind. Those movies just to speak to me nor were they made to cater to my specific interests or sensibilities.
But Star Wars? The Empire Strikes Back? The Fellowship of the Ring? ALIEN, RoboCop, and Captain America: The First Avenger? It's like the filmmakers got inside my head and then reverse engineered exactly the movies I wanted to see! And that's why those make MY list. I know a lot of people thought Cap's first movie was so so but it was a dream come true and a new Temple of Doom for me, but with a character I like even more than Indy! As such if I was stuck on a desert island (that had electricity and good acoustics) I'd actually take CA:TFA over even the mighty Raiders of the Lost Ark. And certainly over Citizen Kane or The Searchers.
Getting back to Batman. I find it interesting that it didn't make your top 10. I assumed it would with your interest in the batmobile. Top 30 (or possibly 40) is about where I would rank it based on nostalgia over the initial phenomenon and opening night entertainment and the fact that it surprisinigly has stood up extraordinarily well over time. I don't know that "Top 30/40" is going to end up being quite enough for me to keep my order but this movie and its designs will always be a part of me to some degree.
