Simon Pegg, an actor who I often identify with fun and freewheeling characters like Shaun in Shaun of the Dead or Scotty in the new Star Trek films, and now the main character in Hector and the Search For Happiness, doles out his list exactly how I would expect.
"I sort of thought I'd wing it. I find that if you start thinking about these things, you end up in a terrible mire of indecision, so I'm just going to try to go off the top of my head with it.
There's no particular order because there will be discriminatory glitches. So here they are."Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1979; 95% Tomatometer)
This was a mythic, elusive film because it was banned from the UK. It took me a long time to track it down, but I heard many a story about it -- helicopter decapitation and the guy with the screwdriver in his ear. That stuff was just so fascinating to me as I grew up, and when I finally saw it, it did not disappoint. It obviously eventually led to me making a film with a similar title.
Raising Arizona (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987; 90% Tomatometer)
I remember seeing that film and having a sort of epiphany in terms of realizing that comedy didn't have to just be about writing and performance, it could be about the way that the camera moved. I loved the way that that film is structurally really poetic and visually inventive in a wacky and delightful way. I think that Edgar Wright cites that as a favorite film of his, and I think it's one of the films we bonded over as youngsters before we started making films together. You can see a lot of that film in our films, in the way that they rhymed scenes and they had recurring motifs and set ups and payoffs which were quite delightful to decipher. For me as a fan of the Coen brothers, even as I'm loving their more sober, serious stuff later on, I do feel that one is my favorite.
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977; 98% Tomatometer)
I just think it's the most perfect romantic comedy ever made. I love its honesty and its kind of slightly bleak kind of view of relationships which I think is daring and real, but at the same time it's not cynical about relationships. It celebrates when relationships can be great, and the joy of meeting someone. It is romantic, but it's not romanticized.
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976; 98% Tomatometer)
In terms of performances, I still watch that film and am stunned by Robert De Niro. It's such a carefully studied performance and he's extraordinary in that movie. I watch it just for the glee, even though it's quite a dark film -- I watch it and I love him in that film, it's just like watching someone do an amazing guitar solo. But I also love Scorcese's sort of sleight of hand in that movie; the way that the story is told, every performance in the film from Peter Boyle and Cybill Shepherd, and everyone in between --Scorcese himself in that awful, cokey, monstrous revenger in the back of that car. It's like watching a very slow car crash and there is great value in that, I think.
Star Wars:Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980; 96% Tomatometer)
I would probably have to go with the first one because it shaped my view of cinema as a kid, and as pure entertainment has a real place in cinema. It is one of the most seismic and significant events in recent cinema history -- some might say detrimental -- but it certainly led to a culture of whiz-bang cinema which we see now, but it meant so much to me as a kid, and Empire is the best of the first three. It also had that slightly weird edgy bleak sheer sort of joy of the first; suddenly everything went to s*** in the most spectacular way and it was kind of cool. I remember coming away from it so thrilled that they all got really beaten up. It's widely regarded as the best of the three and it would be too obvious to say Star Wars.
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/