What is it about the number seven that’s so great? It’s got seven swans a-swimming. There are seven deadly sins (as well as their lesser-known counterparts, the seven Catholic virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity/love, and the seven virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility), seven wonders of the world (ancient and modern). Seventh heaven is quite nice I would imagine. There were seven castaways on Gilligan’s Isle, seven dwarfs, Seven against Thebes (a play by Aeschylus), and seven hills of Rome.  Andrew Jackson was our seventh president and gets to be on $20 bills. I like the seven sins of memory, since most think the only sin of memory is forgetting: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, mis-attribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. And, of course, there are seven days of the week, which works out pretty well and has been adopted by cultures all over the world, even when they’ve kept their own calendar system in other respects. Thank you Babylonians and/or Sumerians, who pioneered the seven-day week, and thank you Jews for convincing everyone that at least one of those days had to be a rest day. Thank you labor movement that you made two days rest days so we get a weekend. One of the reasons for the French Republican Calendar’s failure was its insistence that every month was to consist of three weeks of 10 days each. That’s just too damn long of a week! Anyway, here are the top seven “7” movies!

7. The Seventh Seal (1957): Ingmar Bergman. A 27 year old Max Von Sydow. Death. Chess.

6. 7 Pounds (2008): Will Smith plays a man who decides to transform the lives of 7 strangers.

5. Seven Samurai (1954): And, of course, and its American remake, The Magnificent Seven (1960), both based on Seven Against Thebes.

4. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954): A feel-good movie about the Rape of the Sabine Women!

3. The 7 Deadly Sins (2010): Straight to video, all that gluttony, sloth, pride . . .

2. The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979): The movie that inspired “The Big Chill”

1. Se7en (1995): A cool, literary, dark, and, at the time, compelling serial killer story, with a superb turn by Kevin Spacy as a truly memorable murderer with a plan . . . based on the seven deadly sins.