50 favorite movies

Submitted by MarlaSinger on Tue, 03/28/2006 - 07:24
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  1. Fight Club
  2. American Beauty
  3. Once upon a time in the west
  4. E.T.
  5. Return of the King, The
  6. Forrest Gump
  7. Breakfast Club, The
  8. Back to the Future
  9. Almost Famous
  10. Fellowship of the Ring, The
  11. Twelve Monkeys
  12. Brokeback Mountain
  13. Se7en
  14. Interview with the Vampire
  15. Vanilla Sky
  16. Memento
  17. From Dusk Till Dawn
  18. Groundhog Day
  19. Silence of the Lambs, The
  20. About a boy
  21. William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
  22. Dogma
  23. Neverending Story, The
  24. My girl
  25. Good Will Hunting
  26. Sin City
  27. Pleasantville
  28. Rain Man
  29. Shawshank Redemption, The
  30. Sleepers
  31. 10 Things I hate about you
  32. Terminator, The (1+2)
  33. Stand By Me
  34. Fifth Element, The
  35. Don Juan DeMarco
  36. Catch me if you can
  37. Rebel without a cause
  38. Poltergeist
  39. Devil's Advocate, The
  40. Wild Things
  41. Opposite of Sex, The
  42. Spider-Man
  43. Mission: Impossible (1+2)
  44. Sixth Sense, The
  45. Titanic
  46. Time Machine, The
  47. Face/off
  48. Green Mile, The
  49. Rocky Horror Picture Show, The
  50. Rules of Attraction, The
Author Comments: 

Wow, that was tough! I'm not really satisfied with my list, but it's ok for the first try. Especially the last part (30-50) is kind of improvised...
The list includes many 90s movies and blockbusters. I feel like the only person here without Vertigo, Citizen Kane or a french movie on my list :-) That's probably because it's a "movies I enjoy" rather than a "best movies ever made" list.

0dysseus07/22/2006

I don't think that you're supposed to like French films (with two exceptions.)

I'm confused. Why The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King but no The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers which I thought was the best of the three? TTT was both a great chase and a great quest movie as well as the start of an awesome reinterpreted Beowulf saga.

MarlaSinger07/22/2006

Well, the first reason might just be that it's the second part, and therefore has no real beginning and no satisfying ending. It also switched so much between the different storylines, that it was hard to see it as one complete movie.
The second reason is definately Helm's Deep. It was just dark and wet and soooooo long. It felt as if it made up half of the movie.
Plus: I didn't like Gandalf the White and I loved these Ringwraiths so much in the first part that I was really disappointed by the new flying version.

I agree it's a bit strange not to have it in my Top 50 at all, since I still really liked it (especially Gollum, Eomer and the last march of the ents...). Maybe I will reconsider...

0dysseus07/22/2006

Helm's Deep did take up a lot of time. For me the frustration worked emotionally, probably because I'd already read the book. The (slight) impatience at the amount of screen time resonated because of the time pressure the Fellowship was under. In the book the three narrative strands taken in succession helped to drive the sense of urgency. I think that for TTT Peter Jackson had to make Helm's Deep both the satisfying ending and the prelude to what ROTK would bring. I remember walking out of TTT wondering how on (Middle) earth Jackson was going to top himself in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

But I thought that the battle sequence was a terrific realization of World War I trench warfare. The Mad Max-like confrontation, Théoden becoming the elderly Beowulf and riding out for what he thinks will be his last battle, the coming of the dawn and the White Rider and (in the extended version) the Huorns cleaning up the mess. To my way of thinking middle (Earth) movies in a trilogy are supposed to be bridges from I to III... I like the sense of movement without need for resolution. That may be why The Empire Strikes Back is my favourite installment in some other trilogy.

In TTT the lead characters have all been introduced and the new ancillary characters are great... Treebeard, Théoden, Éowyn, Éomer, Gríma and so on. I admit that Faramir disappointed me. But there's Gollum, for goodness sake. Saruman gets to give an inspirational halftime speech, the Orcs run (and run) cross country, the assault on Orthanc and the warg attack. You gotta love that warg attack.

Don't even get me started on the absence of Casablanca.

MarlaSinger07/27/2006

Maybe that is the whole point - that I don't like movement without need for resolution. Middle movies always have a hard time with me, I kinda need a whole package (The first part usually is a whole package, especially if a sequel hadn't been planned - like Back to the future, for example).
But TTT has many scenes and characters that I LOVE, so I should probably include it in my Top 50 (it's about time I reorganize it anyway).

PS: Terminator II is great, and so are the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission Impossible and X-Men, now that I think about it. Some movies, however, shouldn't have had a sequel, that was just wrong…

MarlaSinger07/27/2006

And Casablanca really is an awesome movie. Damn, I need to change my whole list! That will take days...