100 Movies

Top Ten! Top Ten! Top Ten! That’s right, it’s time to tick off my favorite ten movies of all time. Because all of Blogistan has been waiting, over a month for this concluding post in this thrilling series. Hooray! I imagine that none of these titles will come as a surprise to anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time, but hey, that’s the way it goes. 10. Princess Mononoke This was the first Hayao Miyazaki film I ever saw, and I didn’t see it until more than a year after I’d bought – and fallen in loveDown the rabbit hole….

Wow! Eighty movies down, and only twenty remain in my roster of One Hundred Movies That Only A Patriots Fan Could Hate. Which films shall be listed next! The tension! The anticipation! The blogger trying to fill up space at the top of his post! 20. Apollo 13 I’ve probably made this point before, but it’s my blog and I can make the point again if I want to. I think of my corporate life and every lame meeting I ever attended in which some HR guru or consultant or motivational-speaker-for-hire waxed poetic about teamwork and then made us allDown the rabbit hole….

Only thirty spots remain on my list of One Hundred Movies Everybody Who’s Worth Anything As A Human Being Had Better Love, as objectively selected by a committee of…me. Let’s fill another ten of those slots! Because what’s more fun than filling slots? (Besides playing Missile Command, that is.) 30. The Silence of the Lambs What I always find interesting about Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Hannibal Lecter is that it’s so distinctive that virtually nothing of it carries over into his roles in other films. I’ve seen Hopkins in lots of movies, and I can’t think of a single sceneDown the rabbit hole….

Zounds! More than a month has gone by…yeesh. So anyhow, when last we left this series, we’d explored 60 of my favorite movies. Let’s bump that up to 70 movies now, shall we? 40. The Crimson Pirate A different kind of pirate flick, existing in its own kind of world, neither an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckler nor a Pirates of the Caribbean-style epic. This film is executed in fairly tongue-in-cheek manner, with Burt Lancaster as the pirate captain who finds himself involved in some derring-do, as all pirates do, I suppose. What makes this one different is the way the thrillsDown the rabbit hole….

Wow…it’s been almost a month since the last time I posted an entry in this series. I’m not sure how the time got away from me there, but let’s get back into it, shall we? We’re now entering the top fifty (although these rankings only get more “serious” as we approach the top of the list; my rankings in the top twenty will be more reflective of which movies I like more than others than this part of the list, where I’m just basically listing movies I love). How much longer can we go before I start writing about aDown the rabbit hole….

And away we go with ten more movies that I like a whole lot. Yup. A whole lot, I say! With this entry we get halfway through the Byzantium One Hundred: 60. Nanny McPhee This Emma Thompson vehicle is one of the better childrens’ films of recent years. It’s the tale of an English household where the Father can’t provide adequate discipline for his kids, who terrorize one nanny after another until a horrible woman named Nanny McPhee arrives, with her discipline techniques that don’t seem…quite…possible. I always enjoy British stories for children; the Brits seem generally more aware thanDown the rabbit hole….

Returning to our excursion through one hundred movies that I consider favorites (or, the Greatest Movies Ever If I Had My Way), we find ourselves counting down from 70 to 61. Or, at least I find myself counting them down thusly. You’re just reading this, not counting down anything. Yeesh. Anyhow: 70. Independence Day (ID4) I don’t care how implausible it is. I don’t care that an entire starfaring species, capable of interstellar travel and able to construct spaceships whose force shields can withstand direct hits by tactical nuclear weapons, are nevertheless undone by a computer virus uploaded via anDown the rabbit hole….

It’s been a while since the last entry in this series, so let’s get going again! Here are the next ten of my favorite movies (give or take a few I may have forgotten about), starting at #80 and going to #71. 80. Forrest Gump I’m not sure which movie has suffered the greater backlash, Titanic or Gump. (Come to that, Dances With Wolves also always has to be mentioned in the topic of backlashes against once-beloved movies.) I can sort of understand the backlash, but the sheer hatred that both movies now seem to inspire amazes me. I’ve neverDown the rabbit hole….