Everyone who likes films has a list like this. The ones you bring up at dinner, the ones you have lent on disc and never had back, the ones you have described so many times that you have a set speech for each and can see the moment the other person decides they will probably not bother. I have been keeping mine for about twenty years. Here it is, with an honest account of why each one loses, and one last go at winning.

Wake in Fright (1971)

The pitch: a schoolteacher stops for one night in an Australian mining town and does not leave for a week, because everyone is so friendly. The reason people do not watch it: I always mention the kangaroo hunt, because I feel I should, and that is the end of the conversation. The last go: it is the best film about drinking ever made, and it has Donald Pleasence as the man you will become if you stay another day. It was lost for thirty years and found in a bin in Pittsburgh. Watch it for him.

Sorcerer (1977)

The pitch: four criminals drive two trucks of nitroglycerine over a rope bridge in a storm. The reason people do not watch it: the title, which sounds like a fantasy film, and the fact that it came out the same week as Star Wars and has never quite recovered. The last go: the bridge is real, the trucks are real, the river is real, and it is the most frightening ten minutes William Friedkin ever shot, which is a man who made The Exorcist. There is no CGI because there was no CGI.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

The pitch: Robert Mitchum as an ageing Boston gun runner trying to trade his way out of a prison sentence while everyone he knows sells him out first. The reason people do not watch it: nothing happens. That is the point and it is a hard sell. The last go: it has the best speech about being in a hurry in any crime film, it has Mitchum at his most tired and most human, and it will make you feel about Boston the way Get Carter makes you feel about Newcastle.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

The pitch: a strip club owner loses the club at cards to the mob and is offered one way out. The reason people do not watch it: it is Cassavetes, so it is two hours and it does not tell you where to look. The last go: Ben Gazzara is the most charming man ever put on film and the last scene, where he goes back on stage in a bloodstained shirt to tell the girls to smile, is the best thing about show business anyone has ever said.

Point Blank (1967)

The pitch: Lee Marvin is shot on Alcatraz and comes back for his money. The reason people do not watch it: I say "it is sort of a dream" and people hear "it is slow". The last go: there is a scene where Marvin walks down an airport corridor and the film plays his footsteps over everything that follows, so that by the time he kicks the door in you have been hearing him coming for two minutes. Every cool film since has stolen from it. Watch the original.

Blue Ruin (2013)

The pitch: a man living in his car finds out his parents' killer is being released and goes home to do something about it, badly. The reason people do not watch it: it sounds like every other revenge film. The last go: it is the revenge film for people who think they would be useless at revenge, which is all of us. The scene where he goes to an old school friend to buy a gun is the most relaxed scene about a gun in cinema. The friend is Buzz from Home Alone.

The Long Good Friday (1980)

The pitch: Bob Hoskins as a London gangster trying to bring American money into Docklands over one bank holiday weekend, while someone blows up his empire piece by piece. The reason people do not watch it: it is British, which for a lot of people still means it will look like television. The last go: it looks better than most American films from the same year, the speech at the end is the best in British crime cinema, and the final shot, two full minutes of Hoskins' face in the back of a car, is the reason he became a star.

Thief (1981)

The pitch: James Caan as a safecracker who has planned his whole life on a postcard and takes one job for the mob to buy it. The reason people do not watch it: they think they have seen it because they have seen Heat. The last go: this is where Heat comes from. The rain, the neon, the men who only talk about work, the Tangerine Dream score. Caan has said it is the performance he is proudest of and he was in The Godfather.

Why this keeps happening

None of these are hard films. They are all under two hours except the Cassavetes, they all have a plot you can say in a sentence, and most of them have a scene you would recognise if you saw it clipped. They lose because a recommendation is a small ask that arrives at the wrong time, on a Tuesday, when the other person has already decided what they are watching. So I have stopped asking. I am feeding them into the daily frame game one at a time instead, and sooner or later one of them will catch you when you are not expecting it. That is how I found all of them.