On the silver screen
I don’t think I am a movie buff. I’ve never seen Casablanca, I don’t refer to movies as “films,” and I fell asleep in Michael Clayton. (I fall asleep in a lot of movies, but what makes that out of the ordinary is I fell asleep about 20 minutes into it and didn’t wake up until there were about 15 minutes left. I have never slept through that much of a movie in the theater. A definite waste of $7.50.) I really like movies, though. As I point out to my friends, it doesn’t take much for me to enjoy one. Among some of the movies that I thought were pretty cool that most people with any sense hated:
The Fast & The Furious 3 — Tokyo Drift
Without A Paddle
War of the Worlds
Cloverfield
Men In Black 2
Batman Forever
Movies I hated that the vast majority loved:
Clerks
All 3 Lord of the Rings
Spiderman
Wedding Crashers
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
So that should tell you right there that I am no expert on film making.
That being said, however, I have seen quite a few movies in my day. I would say I have seen more than the average American. Especially in high school, a weekend meant a movie marathon in our friend Alex’s basement. So imagine my surprise when Entertainment Weekly released its list of top 100 movies of the last 25 years, and I had seen only 48(!) of those movies
How pathetic is that? Now obviously I could not have seen more than half of the movies that were released in the last 25 years, but you would think that I would have been able to crack the top 50 percent of the greatest.
(Now technically, there were 102 movies because the #2 movie on the list was The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which isn’t fair. That is a major cop-out by EW, saying that they could not rank the three, so they just lumped them all together. They were even three separate books.)
I decided that I must correct this pop culture travesty and go on a mission to see all 100 of EW’s top 100 greatest movies of the last 25 years. I was going to go in order from 100-1, but that would mean I would have to start with South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and I feel like that would make me abandon my quest before it even began. So I will do it sporadically, marking movies off the list as I watch them.
My choices for the first movie I watch are The Talented Mr. Ripley, Full Metal Jacket and Swingers, any suggestions?
Side note: By comparison, I have seen 25 of the American Film Institutes top 100 movies of all time, which for some reason sounds more acceptable because most of those weren’t released in my lifetime, and they don’t show a lot of them on TNT. I at one time felt like I should see all of those, but I quickly realized, about 10 minutes into Doctor Zhivago, that too many of those movies are from a different time, and no matter how good experts told me they were, I was not going to enjoy them. That’s why I am sticking with the last 25 years.
TJ, one of the only people I know for sure that reads this blog on a regular basis that isn’t related to me, pointed out that I need to also include my favorite movies list. That seems like a tough task. I mean, I know for sure that my two favorite movies are The Godfather and Braveheart, but after that, it’s a crapshoot. But my job with this blog is to be bold and state my opinions, so for the sake of argument, I will give it a shot:
1. The Godfather
2. Braveheart
3. To Kill A Mockingbird
4. Pulp Fiction
5. The Jungle Book
6. Gladiator
7. The Matrix
8. Once
9. Rain Man
10. Saving Private Ryan
11. Star Wars
12. 12 Angry Men
13. The Sixth Sense
14. Airplane!
15. Memento
16. Empire Records
17. The Godfather Part II
18. The Patriot
19. The Manchurian Candidate (The old one with Sinatra)
20. The Ring
21. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
21. Crash
23. The Royal Tenenbaums
24. A Beautiful Mind
25. 28 Days Later
Before you hang me up to dry, know that this is a very rough list. I’m sure I forgot some movies, and I know I will see more in the next six months that will be added. What I realized while making this list is I cannot believe Braveheart did not make EW’s list. It should be in everbody’s top 10 ever. Feel free to disagree, and anyone who would like to send his or her top movies list is more than welcome to do so in the comment section.
You know “Airplane” should be higher on your list.
Forget about EW’s top 100 movies of the last 25 years and the American Film Institutes top 100 movies of all time. I suggest following “Shane’s top 50 movies to watch before you die.” (In no particular order.)
1.) Magnonlia
2.) Donnie Darko
3.) Boogie Nights
4.) Brokeback Mountain
5.) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
6.) The Color Purple
7.) The Karate Kid
8.) One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
9.) High Fidelity
10.) Adaptation
11.) Sixteen Candles
12.) The Virgin Suicides
13.) Very Bad Things
14.) Raising Arizona
15.) Say Anything …
16.) Kids
17.) Being John Malkovich
18.) A Clockwork Orange
19.) 2001: A Space Odysseey
20.) Cool Hand Luke
21.) The Deer Hunter
22.) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
23.) Groundhog Day
24.) Heathers
25.) The Basketball Diaries
26.) Leaving Las Vegas
27.) Love Story
28.) Midnight Cowboy
29.) The Graduate
30.) Places in the Heart
31.) An Officer and a Gentleman
32.) Malcolm X
33.) American History X
34.) The Last Starfighter
35.) West Side Story
36.) Young Frankenstein
37.) Blade Runner
38.) The Shawshank Redemption
39.) Dances with Wolves
40.) The Boondock Saints
41.) Ichi the Killer
42.) The Shining
43.) The Big Lebowski
44.) Once Upon a Time in the West
45.) The Green Mile
46.) The Wicker Man
47.) Frality
48.) Dead Ringers
49.) Moonstruck
50.) Teen Wolf
Shane, you bring up four movies that should have been on my list that I forgot: The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Shining and Young Frankenstein. Good work. My list is going to have to expand to 50 here pretty soon.
I can’t trust any movie list that doesn’t include Better Off Dead.
Thank you