Film critic David Stratton has finally narrowed his favourite movies down - to 111

But when it was suggested that the longtime co-host of film shows on SBS and the ABC go beyond this single choice and write a book about his favourite films, he wasn't sure he could do it.

"To begin with, I hesitated - I guess because I knew I would find it very, very difficult to contain myself to a limited number of favourite movies," he says.

But he eventually agreed, despite the agonising choices this involved both in number and in selection.

"I started at 101," he says - a traditional number for this sort of project. But it wasn't enough.

"I got to 111 and thought, 'I've got to stop.'''

As well as restricting the number of films, Stratton also decided to limit himself to one film per director, or else some - John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock - would have multiple entries and there would be less variety.

With Hitchcock alone, he rattles off some favourites - Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt, The Lady Vanishes, Psycho - and you get the feeling he could name more. The one he chose to include was North by Northwest, the 1959 film starring Cary Grant as an advertising man who is on the run from the government and foreign spies after being mistaken for a federal agent and framed for murder.

"I first saw it with a young lady," Stratton says.

"It's a silly film in a way but so beautifully handled and so fun."

Speaking of Grant, Stratton also has a soft spot for the 1937 screwball comedy The Awful Truth, about a divorcing couple (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) who sabotage each other's attempts to date other people.

It was, he says, the film in which the classic Cary Grant character - charming, urbane, funny - was established.

Grant, born Archie Leach, came from Bristol.

"It was the next really big city from where I lived - he was almost a local boy," Stratton says.

When Howard Hawks's name is raised, again Stratton fires off a few choice titles - Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo, Red River - but his selection for the book was the twisty private-eye film The Big Sleep (1946), based on a novel by Raymond Chandler.

"I love [Humphrey] Bogart and [Lauren] Bacall," he says.

"Scene after scene is so good. It's a film where every time you see it you wonder what exactly is going on."

The films are arranged chronologically from Fritz Lang's silent German sci-fi story Metropolis (1926) through to Alfonso Cuaro's award-winning Mexican film Roma (2018) and include when and where he first saw them.

He's been a meticulous record keeper of his moviegoing and the venues he lists range from festival screenings to university to film societies to at home on television.

There are also anecdotes about his encounters with some of the participants, whether interviewing them or in less formal situations.

It's worth emphasising the book is about Stratton's favourite movies, not necessarily the ones he considers the best, though there are plenty of widely acknowledged classics in the book, such as Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), Buster Keaton's The General (1927) and Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957).

But, as he says of a number of his selections, "I wouldn't consider some of them to be great films: they're films I'm very, very fond of."

The Brothers Rico, for example, is a B crime thriller from the 1950s about a former crime syndicate accountant (Richard Conte) who finds himself drawn back into that world.

"It's a small scale film noir with no pretensions to being a great film at all but I just love it."

Stratton saw it on a double bill with another film included in the book, the western 3:10 to Yuma, in which a struggling rancher (Van Heflin) takes on the dangerous job of escorting an outlaw (Glenn Ford) to a prison-bound train.

"I was 18 and it was in 1957 in Birmingham, where I was working at the time," he said.

"I loved them so much I went back and saw the program again."

They're among the 26 films in the book from the 1950s. That's the decade that features the largest number of his favourites. He was a teenager eagerly pursuing his cinematic passion and, in the latter part of the decade, living away from home for the first time, so he was free to watch whatever he could.

While there's no obvious thematic thread running through his choices, Stratton says, "One of my criteria for a good movie is that it affects me emotionally."

One film that struck a particularly personal chord was William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the story of three ex-servicemen trying to readjust to civilian life after World War II.

Stratton didn't see the film until 1964, at Sydney University Film Group but it made him think of his parents.

"My father fought in the war and was away for many years - he spent four years fighting in Burma."

Stratton was born in September 1939, days after World War II started - "I was just a wartime baby" - and remembers his father coming home.

Watching the Wyler film, he says. "made me think of my father and how difficult he must have found it adjusting after the war."

The film was a big critical and commercial hit and a major award-winner that captured the feeling of its time.

"It's extraordinary, so moving - it makes me choke up just to think of it."

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) is one of the non-English-language films in the book. In it, the inhabitants of a village being preyed on by bandits hire the samurai to save them. It has a lot of action but also a lot of thought and artistry.

"When I first saw the film it blew me away - it still blows me away."

Australian films are another passion.

"High Tide by Gillian Armstrong is an absolutely wonderful Australian film - Judy Davis is amazing, a great performance."

He's also a fan of Jane Campion's Sweetie (1989) - "such an extraordinary piece of work", Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant (1979), and many more.

Stratton has written two books on the history of Australian film and is working on a third, covering films from the 1990s until now.

He says there used to be quite a large number of significant Australian films released each year but now they're few and far between.

"There's any number of reasons for it - it's something I'm trying to come to terms with in the new book."

My Favourite Movies. By David Stratton. Allen & Unwin. $32.99.