Instead, I decided to pick just one movie from each of my 40 years that would, collectively, add up to something like an autobiography told through movies: The films that meant the most to me personally, the films I've watched the most, the ones whose viewing experiences were particularly memorable, and the ones that I link with important periods, events, and people in my life. The titles I chose didn't necessarily have to be important to me the year they came out — if they had, picking something from 1980, when I was seven days old, would have been tough — but they did have to be released at some point in the last 40 years. So beloved movies from before I was born, things like The Producers, The Sting, Playtime, Citizen Kane, The Awful Truth, and many others, were disqualified.
