1) The Great Escape (1963) - easy choice perhaps the best POW movie ever made, a marvellous combination of humour, action, suspense and tragedy - Garner has a lovely bromance (or is it more David Del Valle?) with Donald Pleasance
2) The Americanization of Emily (1964) - Paddy Chayefsky is one of the greatest screenwriters of all time and if you like Network and the Hospital and haven't seen this I urge you to - it was the first of many times where Julie Andrews played a sexually voracious woman but was still Julie Andrews - the character Tom Cruise plays in "The Edge of Tomorrow" (a movie I really liked) is ripped off from this but no one seemed to comment when that movie all the time
3) 36 Hours (1964) - terrific twisty thriller with Australia's own Rod Taylor whose career had a lot of parallels with Garner even if Rod never became quite as big a star (Rod was considered to play Bret Maverick but the role went to Jim Kelly)
4) Grand Prix (1966) - its hard to make films about competitive car racing interesting because there's a lot of driving around in circles but this looks stunning
5) Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) - really lovely comedy Western, one of the best in that genre - there's an Aussie connection too in that Garner's character is constantly on his way to Australia (I wish someone had done a sequel where Garner's character goes to Australia)
6) Skin Game (1971) - years before Django Unchained Garner made this comedy about a conman who sells a black man in the south during slavery, takes the money, helps him escape, then repeats - the main issue with it is that the stakes for the black man (Lou Gossett) are so much higher than for Garner but it has some good moments
7) The Fan (1981) - Garner was married to the same woman for something like 50 years but in the late 70s they were separated for 18 months during which time he went a bit wild... did cocaine with John Belushi, went on tour with Waylon Jennings and had an affair with Lauren Bacall which meant he would up supporting her in this camp classic recently released on DVD with a commentary from David Del Valle (there you go David, two plugs in the one post) (warning: it is not a good movie but it is great fun to watch with the commentary)
8) Victor Victoria (1982) - Blake Edwards made a mess of his wife's career with Darling Lili, but redeemed himself with this musical comedy which is the best of Julie Andrews' post 60s films
9) Murphy's Romance (1985) - sweet understated film with some very good writing
10) Maverick (1994) - ambling over long comedy from a period when Hollywood seemed to make such things all the time, it gets by on the charm of its three stars, especially Garner
Random trivia - in Garner's memoirs he admits to smoking marijuana regularly for over fifty years, and to punching out Glenn A Larson and Tony Franciosa - so there you go...
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