When people ask me how many movies I've seen, I usually estimate somewhere in the ballpark of three thousand. I was brought up on movies. I was memorizing movies before the age of five. Instead of dating, doing drugs, or getting laid in high school, I'd watch more movies.
It's amazing how consuming that many movies changes the approach to listing off favorites.
When I pounded out a top 100, I omitted Terminator 2. In fact, I didn't list a single James Cameron movie. I love Terminator 2 and I like James Cameron. It just didn't fit in the top 100 for me. Terminator 2 would be in a top 200. I'd need to expand to a top 300 to fit Avatar in. The thing is, Terminator 2 is a great movie and Avatar is a good move. The fact that they fell off of my 100 list isn't me dissing those movies; it's just a matter of volume and taste.
On a theoretical top 1,000, which I'll never bother to make, I'd still mostly be listing movies that are pretty good with some glaring flaw that I can't ignore like Anthropoid or Theeb which I still remember that think of fondly. Not to mention the movies that are "paint by numbers" but still well made.
It's always a little insane to be asked, "What's your favorite movie?" It changes all the time.