
Mark Zanzig
You have seen this question before: “If you were to move to a remote island alone, but could take a couple of movies with you, which movies would you bring? And why?”
Well, sitting on the patio in the summer heat of southern Germany, I thought I should pull together the reply for this question.
I started with a top-ten list of my favorite movies of all times, but it was not enough. At the end I need to take 30 movies.
Here they are:
- City Slickers
- L.A. Story
- Notting Hill
- The Rock
- Music & Lyrics
- Ocean’s 11
- Avanti!
- Ice Age
- Tomorrow Never Dies
- Love Actually
- Night on Earth
- Subway
- The First Wives Club
- Le Gendarme de St. Tropez
- Father of the Bride
- The Blues Brothers
- Casablanca
- Mickey Blue Eyes
- Against all flags
- Death on the Nile
- We’re No Angels
- It’s a Wonderful Life
- Annie Hall
- Witness For the Prosecution
- What’s Up, Doc?
- The Big Blue
- Jurassic Park
- That Man From Rio
- Pink Panther 2
- Simpsons – The Movie
So, on my island I would probably want to see comedy (66%) some of them with a romantic theme (21%) – fun and romance is probably missing on my island. Then I would want to see true classics (41%) and a couple of action thrillers but always with a tongue-in-cheek approach.
In terms of actors – I think I could not get tired of seeing Hugh Grant (4x), Steve Martin (3x), Peter Ustinov (2x), Humphrey Bogart (2x), and the always beautiful Julia Roberts (2x).
Those friendly folks over at the International Movie Database (IMDB) not only provide any imaginable information about each of the movies, no! They also allow rating. And I checked my movies for the island. The best rated movie is (at the time of writing) Casablanca with an average rating of 8.8 of 10, followed by It’s a Wonderful Life (8.7) and Witness of the Prosecution (8.3). The worst rated movies on my list are, sadly, Steve Martins Pink Panther 2 with an average of just 5.2 (entirely unjustified in my opinion), The First Wives Club (5.6), and Mickey Blue Eyes (5.7). The overall average is 7.16 of 10 which does not say much about the quality at all.

IMDB ratings decline over the decades for my movie list
I also did some analysis that I wanted to share with you. I think it’s fun even if it is entirely useless knowledge.
- Is older better? (1) – If you plot the ratings against the year of the first release and add a trend line, it seems that the ratings appear to decrease over time (see graph above).
- Steve Martin – My three favorite movie with Steve Martin have all been rated below the average of 7.16.
- True Classics – Of all the movies that I consider to be “true classics”, only one movie (Subway) has a rating below the average.
- Is older better? (2) – The movies with the best ratings on my list have been released in 1942, 1946, 1957, 1977, and 1980.
- Black & white – The top-three rated movies have all been filmed in black & white. These are the only movies in black & white on my list.
Anyway, over the coming months I will -whenever time permits- publish a review of the respective movie that’s next on the list. The only thing I need now – is a quiet island. ;-)
Note to self – Get DVDs for Casablanca, Against All Flags, Death on the Nile, We’re No Angels, It’s a Wonderful Life, Witness For The Prosecution, and That Man From Rio.





