Alamo 100

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100 Essential Favorite Movies chosen by
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

"Asking an Alamo programmer to name his or her favorite movie is like asking a mother to name her favorite child. Wait, no, that makes it sound too easy.

Asking an Alamo programmer to name his or her favorite movie is like asking a mother to name her favorite child, knowing that the rest of her kids will be taken away. Nope, that still makes it sound too easy.

Asking an Alamo programmer to name his or her favorite movie is like asking a mother to name her favorite child, knowing that the rest of her kids will be killed. Okay yes, that's exactly how it feels.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why we are presenting the Alamo 100, and not the Alamo 10 or the Alamo 50.

When we first had the idea of compiling a list of our most cherished films, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the criteria, and not just because we wanted to put off this Sophie's Choice for a while longer. There are plenty of lists, based on everything from cinematic achievement to popularity, floating around the celluloid landscape, and we wished to avoid redundancy in adding our own voice to the pile.

In the end, it all boiled down to the fact that we just love the hell out of movies. And so this list is defined, not by filmmaking genius or cultural impact, but by the space reserved in our hearts. The Alamo 100 encompasses the movies that we wore out on VHS, the films our friends are sick of hearing us rave about, the cinematic gems that feel like living, breathing members of our family. This is a list that reminds us why we fell in love with cinema in the first place, and why the magic of that romance will never fade.

A quick glance at the Alamo 100 reveals the incredible diversity of taste on the national programming team, which consists of Tim League, RJ LaForce, Greg MacLennan, Tommy Swenson, Joe Ziemba and myself. We're incredibly proud of the fact that our passions encompass 1960s French films and modern day rom coms, Kubrick masterpieces and epic action flicks, obscure trash-horror and feel-good classics. There is simply no classification that can contain our devotion to the silver screen.

In order to generate the Alamo 100, each programmer first created his or her own list of 100 favorites, a Herculean task that caused a fair amount of heartache in the office. These titles were then compiled and ranked based on two factors: 1. their rank on each programmer's list 2. the number of times the title appeared on more than one list. The results are an eclectic mix of shoe-ins and surprises, and we hope that this wildly divergent collection leads to many conversations within the Alamo community. You can explore the full list at Alamo100.com, where you can see which titles drew the most votes and also check out each programmer's individual favorites to find out with whom your tastes most align.

In January, we're launching the Alamo 100 in all of our theaters with seven titles that capture the spirit of this list, and throughout the year, we'll be screening many more. Because we can't live without these movies, and we can't let you live without seeing them."

(Note: the list counts The Lord of the Rings Trilogy as one entry.)