The People Pick Top 1,000 Movies

Call it the people’s-choice film guide.

Zagat Survey, one of the most trusted names in the field of restaurant recommendations, has elbowed its way onto the shelf alongside Leslie Halliwell, Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert. The esteemed surveyors have just produced their first “Zagat Survey Movie Guide: 1,000 Top Films of All Time.”

The slim, silver-and-black volume (perfect for consulting in the aisles of your local video store) offers descriptions of the 1,000 most popular films selected by a group of more than 5,000 nonprofessional voters whose quippy quotes are excerpted inside capsule reviews. These are movie lovers who see at least two to three films a week, and by most accounts, know what they are talking about.

The book contains an impressive and diverse list of titles--from Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria” (“one of Fellini’s most moving and least bizarre films”) and Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” (“James Bond, eat your heart out”) to Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (“superb,” “head-twister”), Buster Keaton’s “The General” (“one of the most remarkable silent films”), John Ford’s “The Searchers” (“a thinking person’s western”), David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” (“another confusing but consuming Lynch production”), Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” (“almost perfect filmmaking”) and Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World” (“a witty look at two nonconformist girls trapped in a homogenized suburb”).

Films are listed in alphabetical order and cross-referenced under categories including genre, decade and special feature with enough subcategories in the latter (adults only, date movies, guy movies, chick flicks, foreign films, rock ‘n’ roll, occupation, Oscar winners by award, country of origin) to make you wish it had its own index.

Each write-up includes U.S. release date, director and cast, running time, rating, and particulars having to do with sequels, subtitles and format availability.

Films are given numerical ratings in four categories: “O” for overall; “A” for acting; “S” for story; and “P” for production values--with 30 amounting to perfection.

The most popular movie among Zagat Survey voters was not Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” which usually crops up as No. 1 on many critics’ lists (it comes in at a respectable No. 8). Tops in the people’s choice guide is Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” followed by Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca” and George Lucas’ “Star Wars.”

Not a bad start, but there are a few holes discernible even on quick inspection.

In rating the top 1,000 films, Zagat voters demonstrate their shallow memory banks. Recent releases appear in disproportionate numbers in the list of the Top 50 films that opens the book. “A Beautiful Mind” comes in at No. 13, while “Blade Runner” rates No. 44. “When Harry Met Sally ... “ is No. 12, while “The Sound of Music” is down the list at No. 23 along with “Lawrence of Arabia” at No. 35. “Memento,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and “Top Gun” make the list, while films such as “Psycho,” “The Third Man,” “The Seventh Seal” and “His Girl Friday” make the top 1,000 but not the top 50.

A random search for some favorite titles finds Woody Allen’s “Love and Death,” Stanley Kramer’s “The Defiant Ones,” Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” and Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” missing entirely, while listings exist for pictures such as “The Mummy” and “Face/Off.”

More disappointing is that in, say, the Chick Flick category, the voters made room for movies like “Ghost” and “Pretty Woman,” but “The Group,” “Mrs. Miniver,” “My Brilliant Career,” “Entre Nous,” “High Tide” and “Dangerous Beauty” appear nowhere in the guide.

But this is a people’s guide, not a critic’s guide.

Even so, at $14.95, the “Zagat Survey Movie Guide” is a terrific pocket source, a helpful, interesting, sure-to-produce-arguments addition to any movie fan’s library.

Deborah Hornblow is a staff writer at the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.