Someone recently asked if I could provide a reliable “core” list of movies. Sometimes two heads are better than one. So I spoke with my friend William Wolfe (who can be found at the Twitter account Zero Soy Pics), to see if he could give me a list of his own favorite films. I told Bill that I’d post both of our lists on my website.

To save space and time, we decided not to include commentary on each movie. We feel confident that readers will be able to form their own conclusions about what each film means to them, making our thoughts superfluous. Please also note that movies are not listed in an order of favoritism. For us, all of them are equally special.

William Wolfe’s Choices:

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Casablanca (1942)

Shadow Of A Doubt (1943)

Dark Passage (1947)

The Enemy Below (1957)

Zulu (1964)

Deadlier Than The Male (1967)

Waterloo (1970) (Because you’ll never see 15,000 authentically dressed extras, and 2,500 cavalry in a film ever again)

Get Carter (1971)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Das Boot (1985)

Bat 21 (1988)

Heat (1995)

Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

The Gathering Storm (2002)

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Master And Commander (2003)

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)

Foot Fist Way (2006)

Gran Torino (2008)

Harry Brown (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Kill List (2011)

John Wick 2 (2017)

The King (2019)

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Quintus Curtius’s Choices:

Sorcerer (1977)

The Lives Of Others (2006)

A Prophet (2009)

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Fear X (2003)

Rec (2007)

Aliens (1986)

Predator (1987)

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Interstellar (2014)

Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

Heat (1995)

The Great Beauty (2013)

Michael Clayton (2007)

Kill List (2011)

Platoon (1986)

The Exorcist (1973)

Jaws (1975)

Timecrimes (2007)

Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Killing Fields (1984)

JFK (1991)

Sideways (2004)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Collateral (2004)

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)

The Godfather, Part 2 (1974)

Planes, Trains, And Automobiles (1987)

Midnight Run (1987)

Stalag 17 (1953)

The Road Warrior (1981)