70. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and it’s no surprise. It’s the story of a young FBI agent (Jodie Foster) who has to get information from a psychopathic prisoner (Anthony Hopkins) in order to track down a horrible serial killer.
It’s a disturbing film and sometimes not easy to watch. Despite some of its gore, it succeeds mostly because of the dialogue and the way the two main characters play off of each other. It goes deeper than just an agent trying to track down a killer; let’s just put it that way. But Hannibal Lecter also makes for an outstanding villain once he’s able to do some stuff.
This is a rare film which I prefer to the book, though the Thomas Harris novel was quite good. Somehow Hopkins brings so much more to Lecter than could be contained on page.
69. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
Unfortunately I’m liking this movie less and less every time I see it but I think that’s because I’ve just seen it so many times. I grew up with this movie, always thinking it was one of the funniest.
Jim Carrey works his ass off to get every single laugh possible and in my opinion, he succeeds. Plot is a pointless thing to talk about in a movie like this, so I’ll focus on some of the funniest parts. The opening scene in which he disguises himself as a delivery man, absolutely abusing his package perfectly introduces his character as the kind of person who doesn’t take anything seriously. He does voices and is very loud. Some would describe it as excessive—and it is—but it is funny in its own way.
68. The Untouchables (1987)
The Untouchables is an exciting gangster film about the group of men that took down Al Capone. It has an A-list cast that includes Robert De Niro, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, and Andy Garcia.
Robert De Niro is menacing as Al Capone, the man who essentially runs Chicago during Prohibition. The look of the film—with the sets and the costumes—is fantastic, capturing Prohibition-era America perfectly.
The highlight of the film—aside from Sean Connery as Malone—is the action scenes. In particular, the train station shootout—completely in slow-motion—is astounding and one of my favorite scenes of all time.
67. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Many consider this Sergio Leone’s best movie. I would say this is his second best, but it’s certainly great.
It’s a three-hour film and it’s a western, so it’s clearly not for everybody. But if you give it a chance, you’ll probably like it for its story, its performances, its musical score, and its gunfights.
There are four central characters. There’s Frank, played by Henry Fonda, an evil ganglord who murders an Irish family at their ranch. I didn’t think Fonda could play a villain either, but Frank is one of the greatest in all of film history. There’s Jill McBaine, played by the stunningly beautiful Claudia Cardinale, who arrives in town to find that her newlywed husband has been murdered by Frank. She’s probably the most interesting character in the film because of the way she deals with everything. She’s a tragic figure taken advantage of by numerous characters. Jason Robards plays Cheyenne, the least interesting of the four main characters. He’s essentially a seen-better-days drunk who teams up with an unnamed stranger, played by Charles Bronson, who always plays the harmonica, to fight Frank. Bronson plays this kind of role as well as Clint Eastwood did in the Dollars trilogy.
As with all Sergio Leone films, the Ennio Morricone music is a showstealer and the climactic gunfight is as good as it could be. And of course, it’s got the great cinematography that you come to expect from Leone.
66. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
This is easily the best cast ever assembled in a motion picture. Every big name in comedy at the time was in this film, and many great non-comedians as well, like Spencer Tracy in the lead as Culpepper.
The plot concerns a bunch of interesting characters racing to get to $350,000, bringing in more and more characters along the way. There are plenty of funny things that happen including my favorite scene of slapstick involving a garage and a hilarious scene involving two people who don’t know how to fly being stuck up in a plane, flying it.
It’s a very long movie at over two and a half hours but that gives it time to show as many hilarious gags as possible, introduce plenty of wacky characters, and feature cameos from some of entertainment’s biggest names. Definitely worth seeing.
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