Wednesday, September 2, 2015

MY List of the “Best” Movies

The thing about movies is, they're story telling that's different from books. In books, the author tries to give enough description that you can picture what's happening, without slowing down the story. In movies, you see the story as it happens, and the visual aspect is equal to the words. Arguably, movies have become more popular than books. Certainly, when a book becomes a movie, more people are exposed to that author's work than ever before.

Someone on my FB feed recently posted a list of the AFI's 100 best movies,  The list could be checked off, and it turned out I had seen only 57 out of that 100.  But the FB post generated an alternative list from Chicago film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. He had a lot of really old and somewhat artier movies, and I only got 5 on his list.

Why should film critics have all the fun? I decided to come up with my own list. I didn't exclude animated movies. My only requirement was that I had seen the movie and liked it for some reason (The Thin Man is on there for the relationship between Nick and Nora. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is there for the visual story telling, etc.). I put The Lord of the Rings as one entry because it was one story, but I listed the first three Star Wars movies by title because they can be viewed separately and I wanted to distinguish them from the second set of movies which were nowhere near as good.

One thing this kind of list points out is that awards are given by year. Plenty of great movies don't win awards because they come out in the same year as other great movies.

Feel free to nominate your own favorites in the comments. I might even add them, as I didn't stick to a specific number. Also, they are not in any particular order, by rank or chronology; they're just as I thought of them,

My top movies of all time

  1. Groundhog Day
  2. The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! 
  3. Bringing Up Baby
  4. Desk Set
  5. It's a Wonderful Life
  6. The Sound of Music
  7. Mary Poppins
  8. American Graffiti 
  9. Notting Hill
  10. It's About Time
  11. Galaxy Quest
  12. Lord of the Rings
  13. Three Men and a Baby
  14. The Green Mile
  15. Forest Gump
  16. The Sting
  17. Up
  18. Toy Story
  19. Some Like It Hot
  20. The Princess Bride
  21. Jurassic Park
  22. Auntie Mame
  23. The Truman Show
  24. The Matrix
  25. Tootsie
  26. The Graduate
  27. Breaking Away
  28. Sleepless in Seattle
  29. Die Hard
  30. Casablanca
  31. Star Wars episode 4: A New Hope 
  32. Star Wars episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back 
  33. Star Wars episode 6: Return of the Jedi
  34. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  35. Pretty Woman
  36. Aladdin (Disney animated version)
  37. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  38. Psycho
  39. Finding Nemo
  40. The Thin Man
  41. Heaven Can Wait
  42. Miracle on 34th Street (original version)
  43. In the Heat of the Night
  44. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  45. Moonstruck
  46. Shrek
  47. The Incredibles
  48. The King's Speech
  49. Rain Man
  50. Beauty and the Beast
  51. Sense and Sensibility
  52. The Sixth Sense
  53. Little Miss Sunshine
  54. The Blind Side
  55. Argo
  56. Erin Brockovich