Q. In a series that contains titles with internal commas, would you use commas or semicolons to separate each item? For instance, how would you punctuate “the films The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, With Six You Get Eggroll, and Die, Monster, Die!”?
A. We’ve gotten many variations on this question over the years. In general, if a series is clear to you with commas, and you think it will be clear to your readers—and especially if you are resistant to semicolons or think they wouldn’t be a good fit for your document—then keep the commas. Otherwise, use semicolons instead; that’s what they’re for (among other things, as this sentence demonstrates).
Whether you choose commas or semicolons as separators, make sure you don’t italicize them along with the titles (any punctuation within a title remains in italics; see CMOS 6.2). For the lack of a serial comma in the title of the first movie (which follows the usage in that movie’s title sequence), see 8.167.