Stoo said:
Most but not all. Which film is "best" is a matter of opinion. Heck, I still remember the "Crusade" review in our local newspaper the day after it came out (John Griffin, Montreal Gazette). The headline read, "Spielberg saves his best for last." According to him, your favourite Indy film is the best. Now do you see how silly the question is?
Heh, well, Griffin is wrong.
Seriously though, it's a valid point, and maybe I'm reading the evidence in the way that best advocates for my own position, but the word "best," to me anyway, has pretensions to objectivity, to recognitions of craftsmanlike proficiency and consistency just as much as artistic elevation. Certainly, the judgement of best-ness is a subjective one, but it usually - or ought to, anyhow - take into account some overview of well-informed opinions, a collection of subjectivities. "Favorite," on the other hand, is much more bald-faced about being a subjective judgment.
Now, that's not a slur on subjective judgments or on the idea of having favorites. As I said above, I think the great value in articulating what our favorites are is in recognizing what speaks to us as individuals, and is in many respects a more interesting question than that of what we consider to be best. They're aiming for different things.
But then, I also distinguish perfection from greatness as aims in art, too. (Greatness, incidentally, is the higher of the two, in my mind. It's more alive, and more complex. Perfection doesn't allow that much complexity.)
(Remind me sometime not to go the Raven when I'm in the middle of writing a paper on Jung or any other German.)