Monday, August 04, 2003

Mr. Cootiehog challenged me to name my all time favorite movie (or rather what I consider to be the best of all time) in a comment. His is Star Wars, which I think is excellent and a classic, but is not what I consider the best of all time.

Now given that I haven’t seen some of the movies that are considered classic bests (Casablanca or Citizen Kane for example), this is my list of the Top Ten based on what I’ve actually seen:

10.  Alien - this is always in my top ten, it’s the best of it’s genre, the one that set the trend that is copied in all suspense/horror movies today.

9.  Star Wars - it’s a classic fairy tale with excellent special effects for it’s time.

8.  To Kill a Mockingbird - who doesn’t love Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch?

7.  The Manchurian Candidate - suspenseful, heartbreaking, brilliant.

6.  Forrest Gump - I got a little tired of the famous people being put into Forrest’s life after a bit, but you can’t ignore the message and heart of this movie.

5.  Yankee Doodle Dandy - this is my favorite musical of all time (followed closely by Holiday Inn). Cagney as the singing, dancing, composing George M. Cohan.

4.  Psycho - the shower, Mother, Norman, black & white, scary goodness.

3.  The Bridge on the River Kwai - I know that the real POWs who experienced the events depicted in this movie hate the movie because it’s not based too much on reality. But it’s a classic tale of pride, patriotism, determination.

2.  Braveheart - it’s all about Freedom.

1.  Schindler’s List - doing what you can to make a difference, prevailing against evil, documenting history.

This is my list. You don’t have to agree, I don’t expect you to. And it was tough to cull the list to these 10 - I could have done a top twenty...thirty...100.

UPDATE (Tues 9:45am): I realized this morning (while I was cooking food and getting ready for work) that I completely forgot the Lord of the Rings Trilogy! D’oh! So I’m going to drop Star Wars to Honorable Mention and move LOTR to #4, with the rest moving down accordingly.