I've always hated these kinds of questions. "What's your favorite movie?", or "Who's your favorite band?" ("That's right!", says Rob), or "What's your favorite song?", or "Do you want fries with that?", or "Will you please let go of me?"

There are - how many? - eleventy gajillion movies out there, and I'm supposed to have a fave? Call me back after I've seen every one.

I can give you favorite moments, and vivid feelings that remain after years of seeing movies.

Mickey Rourke's first appearance in Body Heat, for instance, lipsyncing to Bob Seger, and that movie's updating of noir in general - so good that it made you put away any misgivings about it being in color.

Chinatown: Roman Polanski's cameo as the utterest bastard in L.A., cutting Jack Nicholson's nose like he was opening an envelope. The edgy, ambient stasis of Sex, Lies, and Videotape - Baton Rouge was never that sexy in real life (YMMV).

The general free-spirited (and deceptive) wackiness of A Bout de Souffle; the decadence of La Dolce Vita - I had to leave the first time I saw it.

Getting lost in Andre Gregory's descriptions of his Findhorn period in My Dinner with Andre, and marveling that two guys sitting at a table talking could sustain a film.

Woody Allen "sitting at the grownups' table", with stuff like Interiors and Manhattan, then the running joke about "the earlier, funnier pictures" in Stardust Memories. And Charlotte Rampling, and the Tet Offensive execution wallpaper, and Django, and the Sunday Times.

I could go on. I will someday. Maybe not.