All links on movie names are to IMDB.
I think the movie I like most is Tokyo Story. In my view it is a deeply beautiful film. But I wouldn't particularly recommend anyone to watch it. I think many people would find it boring. Unfortunately I can't articulate why it might be so good, or even why I love it. Part of the reason is that it has such a strong moral force, or a strong message of morality, but that this message is conveyed with such great gentleness.
The movie I most enjoyed watching is probably The Insider. It is so beautiful I could just sit in awe and drink it in. The only flaw, in my opinion, is an imbalance between Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. During scenes that had Al Pacino but not Russell Crowe in, I found myself getting slightly impatient for Russell Crowe to return. Perhaps that just means that I thought Russell Crowe acted better. Other reasons I loved it are the scene in a Japanese restaurant (I was in Japan when I saw it), and the scenes where Russell Crowe is a schoolteacher. And, especially, the newsreel footage of Michael Gambon (I think) saying "I believe that nicotine is not addictive." And in the court hearing in the countryside when one of the lawyers says "Wipe that smirk off your face!" It is a great film.
I just re-read my diary of the time in 2000 when I was in Japan. (I was deciding whether to throw it out or not.) I wrote that we'd seen The Insider, and I'd thought it was very good. Then I wrote "I was speechless with admiration, though that's not saying much, I'm usually speechless in the cinema." When I re-read that I thought it was my greatest joke ever, but now I can type it without even smiling, so maybe it's not funny. The commas and the simple language are because I was reading Beckett at that time, and I was trying to sound like him.
Made by the same person, Michael Mann, is Manhunter. It's based on a prequel novel to The Silence of the Lambs. The user comments on IMDB say it's not as good as Silence of the Lambs, and not as good as the book. But I think it's a million times better than Silence of the Lambs, and much less sick. The final scene is so good it would surely bear watching a hundred times. I absolutely think Michael Mann is in the same class as Stanley Kubrick, or anyone like that.
Perhaps if I had to take just one desert-island movie it would be Withnail and I, or Austin Powers. And the title of the second Austin Powers film has to be the funniest title ever.
I love the "Dollars" trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), even though I thought I wouldn't because they're westerns.
The films I hate most, I suppose, are Titanic and Aliens. It seems to me that James Cameron must have been determined to make every single aspect of those films a cliche. Martin Amis recently wrote a book called The War on Cliche in which he said something like "Whenever I praise a piece of writing, I am praising an absence of cliche. Whenever I dispraise, I quote cliches." Where other writer-directors put effort into avoiding cliches, James Cameron puts all of his into employing as many of them as possible. That said, I thought True Lies was good, apart from the middle section. (But it appears he didn't write that film, he only directed it.) Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "You're fired" to Art Malik hanging on the Harrier missile, now that is a great line. In that instant, the memory of a load of examples of "He never kills a bad guy without saying something cool" flash through your mind. And there is also the possibility that the whole scene was written in order to have that joke - which makes it even better.
Starship Troopers and Con Air are both comedies, I am sure.
Here's one thing that occurred to me that goes against what most people seem to think. It applies to films like The Usual Suspects and Primal Fear. Maybe there are others. Now the crux of The Usual Suspects, once you've watched it, is that Verbal Kint (played by Kevin Spacey) is in fact Keyser Soze, the master criminal. Throughout the whole of the film, he completely convinced us and the detective (Chazz Palminteri) that he was this weak feeble character, and then at the end it turns out that in fact he's the evil master criminal - and, what's more, he's not even crippled. But my point is: it's not that impressive - he's Kevin Spacey, and he's a good actor! Of course Kevin Spacey is able to convince us and the detective that he's the fairly innocent character. That's because he's a good actor.
To put it another way: Kevin Spacey acting Keyser Soze acting an innocent Verbal Kint is naturally going to be as convincing as Kevin Spacey acting an innocent Verbal Kint. From Kevin Spacey's point of view, it's exactly the same. He just acts the innocent Verbal Kint, and then in the very final scene he acts Keyser Soze by straightening his back and his foot.
The Usual Suspects wants us to gasp at how Keyser Soze deceived us so well, but it's actually no more impressive than any actor playing any old role believably. I haven't explained that very clearly, but I think I have a point. Primal Fear similarly has Edward Norton's character reveal at the end that he was acting/lying through the whole of the film up to that point.
I have one other thought about the whole concept of a few films. (In this case too it didn't stop me enjoying the films as they were meant to be enjoyed when I saw them.) The only example I can think of is Death and the Maiden. I expect the stage-play it's based on is essentially the same. The audience is meant to spend the whole film wondering whether Ben Kingsley is guilty or not of certain crimes. And then at the end you find out he is guilty.
The problem in my view is that if he wasn't guilty then there would be a big anti-climax, and a big loose end, i.e. who is guilty, and why did Sigourney Weaver think it was Ben Kingsley? (There are no other suspects presented during the film.) And this would make the whole film rather weak. So suppose you're half-way through watching it, and it occurs to you "This is a well-made kind of film, certainly not the kind of film that would end in a big anticlimax or have a big loose end." It follows from that that Ben Kingsley is guilty! (To rephrase that: if you assume there aren't going to be any big anticlimaxes or loose ends, then Ben Kingsley must be guilty.)
Alfred Hitchcock either didn't think it was an anticlimax, or he thought an anticlimax was OK. In Suspicion, you spend the film wondering whether or not Cary Grant is really evil or not, and then you find out at the end that he's not. By my theory the audience could have deduced part-way through that he must be evil. Actually that works out fine, doesn't it? Then they get a pleasant surprise at the end.
Of American TV series, I like The Sopranos, The Simpsons, The Larry Sanders Show and Seinfeld. Of British ones I liked The Day Today, Brass Eye, I'm Alan Partridge, some of Coogan's Run, Shooting the Past, and Traffik. Traffik I thought was stunningly good, miles better than any other TV drama I'd ever seen.