The Third Place Club

Top Ten Third-Favorite Film 

from American Directors*

1. Manhattan  (Woody Allen, 1979)
2. The Long Goodbye  (Robert Altman, 1973)
3. North by Northwest  (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)**
4. The Thin Red Line  (Terrence Malick, 1998)***
5. His Girl Friday  (Howard Hawks, 1940)
6. Sabrina  (Billy Wilder, 1954)****
7. Hard Eight  (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996)
8. The Royal Tenenbaums  (Wes Anderson, 2001)
9. Taxi Driver  (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
10. Apocalypse Now  (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Honorable Mentions 

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen), Memento (Nolan), Dazed and Confused (Linklater)

*  I'm mostly sure this is according to how much I like the director, not by movie.  To qualify for this list, I needed to have seen at least half of the director's body of work. Orson Welles should be on this list, but I need to see/rewatch more of his films past The Magnificent Ambersons. Sadly, I didn't consider Nicholas Ray, John Ford, and John Cassavetes for similar reasons.

** I am claiming Hitchcock for the US.

*** I have not seen his latest, The Tree of Life.

**** Yes, I snubbed Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot for this.