My 100 Favorite Movies with Reviews (60-56)

60. Wayne’s World (1992)

My life changed a little when I saw Wayne’s World. It was one of those movies I had been wanting to see for years but unlike American Beauty, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Blade Runner, it’s the one example of those films that truly exceeded my expectations. It’s just a stupid, goofy, but ultimately irresistible film.

Wayne and Garth make for one of the great duos of film history. They’re both hilarious and every time I see the movie, I come out of it with a different idea as who I like more. As of now, I’d say it’s Garth.

There are so many great moments and this is just a fun movie that leaves you with a good feeling afterwards.

59. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

One of the many classics from 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is the improbable story of a local hero being appointed senator after a senator’s death. Jefferson Smith, in one of James Stewart’s finest performances, ends up being the one incorruptible person in Washington.

This film is filled with great performances. There’s Stewart, of course, but I also love Claude Rains as one of the corrupt senators fighting against Smith. The highlight of the film is certainly the filibuster at the end, which manages to point out everything that is great about this country.

58. Toy Story (1995)

This film captures the imagination of every kid on earth, but it’s still very entertaining to me at this age. It’s overwhelmingly likable, filled with great characters, subtle humor, and rich emotion. To me, this first film by Pixar is still their best.

A highlight is certainly the end, as the toys all team up to fight the evil neighbor, Syd. It’s both humorous and exciting. And the scene that follows, as Woody and Buzz attempt to make it to the moving van, is classic.

57. The Terminator (1984)

This is one of the best action movies of the 1980s, a decade that produced some great ones like Die Hard and the Indiana Jones movies.

The story is that a machine from the future, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, comes back in time to kill Sarah Connor, future mother of the general that defeats the machines. It’s an engaging story and showing Sarah Connor as just a regular person really helps the audience sympathize with her in the situation she’s in. She finds out what’s going on when Kyle Reese comes to her aid, sent to the past from her future son.

This film is filled with some great action, from car chases to the shootout in the police station. It’s very violent and entertaining. The climax features a dated stop-motion machine chasing after Sarah. Despite the aged special effects, this scene still works very well because of all that’s at stake and the overall tension of the film.

Highly recommended, though inferior to its sequel.

56. The Natural (1984)

Robert Redford initially attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship, though they no longer have a baseball team. I begin this review by saying that because Robert Redford plays a baseball player in this film and he is very convincing. Often times sports movies cast good actors who don’t look like they can play the sport, like Robert De Niro in Bang the Drum Slowly. Redford truly is a natural, however.

He plays Roy Hobbs, a young pitcher destined to become one of the greatest to ever play the game, before he is shot and comatose. The film picks up twenty years later when the forgotten Hobbs joins the New York Knights and literally hits the cover off the ball. It’s not realistic, but it does a great job of capturing the mysticism of the game of baseball. It’s a nostalgic and fantastical look at America’s pastime with some outstanding performances from a great cast that includes Glenn Close, Barbara Hershey, the dad from A Christmas Story, and Robert Duvall.

It’s a movie that certainly has its flaws. But if you’re a baseball fan or someone who cheers for the underdog, you will probably like this.

My 10 Favorite Movies from the Last Decade

After finally getting around to see The Artist, I decided to compile a list of my 10 favorite movies from the last 10 years. I took the liberty of putting asterisks on films nominated for Best Picture. Ones in bold won

2011

1. Midnight in Paris*
2. The Artist*
3. My Week with Marilyn
4. Drive
5. The Adventures of Tintin
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
7. Super 8
8. Melancholia
9. Moneyball*
10. Crazy, Stupid, Love

2010

1. Inception*
2. True Grit*
3. Tangled
4. The King's Speech*
5. 127 Hours*
6. Rubber
7. The Fighter*
8. Toy Story 3*
9. Shutter Island
10. Winter's Bone*

2009

1. Inglourious Basterds*
2. Up*
3. Up in the Air*
4. Moon
5. The Informant!
6. (500) Days of Summer
7. Star Trek
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
9. The Hurt Locker*
10. The Cove

2008

1. Gran Torino
2. Slumdog Millionaire*
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button*
4. The Dark Knight
5. Wall-E
6. Hunger
7. Religulous
8. Tokyo Gore Police
9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
10. Doubt

2007

1. The Bourne Ultimatum
2. Disturbia
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
4. The Simpsons Movie
5. Superbad
6. I Am Legend
7. No Country for Old Men*
8. Dan in Real Life
9. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
10. Ocean's Thirteen

2006

1. The Departed*
2. Flags of Our Fathers
3. Children of Men
4. Borat
5. Blood Diamond
6. Casino Royale
7. This is England
8. The Prestige
9. The Pursuit of Happyness
10. Invincible

2005

1. The Constant Gardener
2. Hitch
3. War of the Worlds
4. Crash*
5. Munich*
6. Walk the Line
7. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
8. Wedding Crashers
9. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
10. Flightplan

2004

1. Miracle
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Million Dollar Baby*
4. Hotel Rwanda
5. The Bourne Supremacy
6. The Aviator*
7. The Passion of the Christ
8. Shrek 2
9. The Incredibles
10. Van Helsing

2003

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*
2.  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
3. Finding Nemo
4. Lost in Translation*
5. Elf
6. Bruce Almighty
7. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
8. Secondhand Lions
9. Scary Movie 3
10. Johnny English

2002

1. Gangs of New York*
2. The Bourne Identity
3. Road to Perdition
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
5. Catch Me If You Can
6. Chicago*
7. The Emperor's Club
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers*
9. The Pianist*
10. Austin Powers in Goldmember

My 100 Favorite Movies with Reviews (65-61)

65. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)

This movie is an absolute comedy classic, with plenty of memorable characters and scenarios. It’s the definitive college comedy and just about everything that happens is hilarious. I don’t have a lot to say about this one because my writing can’t give credit to how funny this movie is.

64. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

I’d go so far to say that the original A Nightmare on Elm Street is the scariest movie ever made. The plot is ingenious. It’s about a man, Fred Kruger, who murders people in their dreams. I don’t know if anything can be scarier than that; it makes for a remarkably dark fantasy film.

The acting is weak, that’s for sure. But the scares, the kills, and the suspense are what make this film such a classic. It did something very new with the slasher genre, which director Wes Craven would go on to repeat in New Nightmare and Scream. If you like horror movies, you should love this.

63. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

Lou Gehrig is my favorite athlete of all time and this movie is a great biopic showing why he was such a great man. Like plenty of biopics, it ignores his flaws which I read about in his biography, but the film does a great job in painting the portrait of a true American hero.

Gary Cooper plays Gehrig with his typical charm and you can’t help but like him. He’s also teamed up with Teresa Wright and Babe Ruth. It’s a very good baseball film. It is aged, for sure, but it’s a very emotional film and it gets to me every time.

62. Gangs of New York (2002)

If you ask me, this is Scorsese’s most underrated movie. It was up for about a thousand Academy Awards but lost every one, and it’s been overshadowed by his other recent films such as The Aviator and The Departed.

The opening scene is great. It sets the tone for a brutal, violent, complicated historical film about revenge against the toughest and meanest man in New York in the 1860s. This is of course Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, one of his greatest performances.

I love the way this movie shows the decaying effect of violence in a historical setting. It has a truly epic feel to it with all its costumes, extras, and sets. It’s quite a good movie.

61. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

I’m not sure of anyone who hasn’t seen this movie, or anyone who hasn’t loved it, for that matter. That says a lot about this comedy that is just so much fun, I never get tired of watching it.

Ferris (Matthew Broderick) is great but I especially love his neurotic best friend Cameron Frye. Their interactions are what make this movie for me. Oh, and Ed Rooney.

There are so many hilarious moments in this movie that describing them can hardly do it justice. See the movie.

My 100 Favorite Movies with Reviews (70-66)

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.

My 100 Favorite Movies with Reviews (75-71)

75. Midnight in Paris (2011)

This is the only movie in my list from the new decade. I absolutely loved it. It’s both funny and charming, and certainly intelligent.

It’s essentially a celebration of art in all its forms, and a nostalgic view of the past. Owen Wilson plays an engaged man on vacation in Paris who takes a walk and somehow ends up back in time to the 1920s. Characters such as Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald, and Pablo Picasso are introduced.

You’re really drawn into the protagonist’s world and you feel the wonder and awe that he does. He falls in love not only with a time and a place, but also with Marion Cotillard, Picasso’s and Hemingway’s mistress.

The film idolizes the artists of the past but also is a movie that reminds you that film is an art form itself.

74. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

I’ve heard this described by someone—I think it may have been Alice Cooper—as the most enjoyable movie ever, and that might very well be accurate. Like The Sting, it uses the likable pairing of Newman and Redford for laughs, and does even better, if you ask me.

It’s essentially a buddy comedy in the guise of a western but somehow it works. The dialogue is some of the most interesting ever written, and there are some great moments of action. The final scene, for instance, is both iconic and beautifully shot.

73. The Godfather (1972)

Many have argued this as the greatest film of all time and in order to have it this low on my list, I must again draw attention to the fact that this list is of how much I enjoy these movies. It’s a great movie, just not my favorite.

It’s the story of a mafia family in New York, and it transitioning from one generation to another, making drastic changes that lead into the second film of the Coppola trilogy.

I don’t have much to say about this one because basically everything has been said. Every scene, line of dialogue, and character is memorable and classic.

72. Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Cool Hand Luke is the story of Luke Jackson, a man in a southern prison. If you ask me, this is Paul Newman’s best performance, and he plays such an interesting character. George Kennedy is also outstanding as a fellow prisoner, and he won an Oscar.

It is interesting to see how Luke gains respect amongst his prison community. Eventually he escapes, more than once, actually, and those scenes are exciting.

The dialogue and characters—in addition to the performances—are what makes this film so good. However, the directing is a little awkward and may turn some off.

71. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

What if someone you’ve known for years is all of a sudden someone unknown? That is the primary question Invasion of the Body Snatchers goes about answering in a story about aliens that come to earth and replicate the bodies of others. The build-up is great and you’re filled with this impending sense of dread but nothing huge happens until about halfway in.

Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter do a great job as the two leads caught in a nightmare. The concept itself is extremely interesting and like any great sci-fi film of old, it relies on suspense and story-telling rather than special effects.

My biggest complaints come with how quickly they figure out the plan of the aliens. It doesn’t happen until about halfway through the film but they just see the pods and then McCarthy all the sudden knows, which is a little weird. And the ending is a bit of a letdown but I guess I should have expected it.