My Favorite Movie List

Thanks to derek, I have decided to compile my own favorite movie list. Now since, I have probably seen more movies and have more years on him, my list is longer and was harder to compile. There were so many great movies that couldn't make my top 25. So just for right now I have some Honorable Mentions. Movies that I love for sure, but just didn't make the cut. These are the movies that if you don't love, I guess that's ok, but you're wrong.

Honorable Mentions

-21 Grams
Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro in a disjointed story about rebirth, new love, revenge, grief and forgiveness. It's told in a jigsaw puzzle where tenses change and scenes at the end happen in the beginning. The title has nothing to do with drugs, but the theory that when a person dies the lose 21 grams of weight. All three actors are strong, but as a criminal set straight by Jesus, Benicio Del Toro is stronger and more powerful in this, than he was in his Oscar winning turn in Traffic.

-Best in Show
Waiting for Guffman will be on my top 25, but this when is almost as good and quotable. 'What are you suggesting, my good man?' With a bigger cast than Guffman, Christopher Guest's mockumentary is hands down the best Dog Show movie ever made. Fred Willard as the clueless commentator is hilarous as is Eugene Levy as the terrier owner with two left feet. And, plus, Winky is adorable.

-Boogie Nights
Watching this movie again recently, I forgot how darkly funny, sad, engrossing, and hopeful it was. It's about a family of lost people, struggling together, which happens to be set in the porn industry in the late 1970's. Beautifully shot by P.T. Anderson with a cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's not graphic in its depiction of the adult film industry, though you definitley want to send the kids to bed before the final reel. And the eventual downfall of the characters in the final act has some of the most tension filled scenes in film history.

-Capturing the Friedmans
Just putting it on here because probably no one has ever heard of it, but this documentary MUST be seen. It's about a upper-middle class family in New York in the 1980s whose father figure and one of his sons is accused of sexual assault. What's bizarre about this is not the only the question of guilt, and the testimony of the alleged victim's, but that the family shot home movies of themselves arguing about it, so the audience really gets to see what happened in the kitchen after a court date, etc. Truly mind blowing.

One more...

Mulholland Drive
-David Lynch at his puzzling best. Naomi Watts (once again) stars as a young, naive girl coming to Hollywood to make a name for herself. There she meets a handsome producer, and a fellow starlet. Her aunt is missing, there's a murder, a car accident, lost identity, a creepy guy behind a diner, a cowboy, a phone that won't stop ringing, creepy casting types, a key, a blue box, and whole lot more of confusing stuff. Then, an hour and a half into it, reality starts. And everything you thought you were confused about, fits in somehow. One of those movies you watch, read about it, then watch again so you're sure what you just saw made sense. Plus, Watts is amazing in her first lead role.

I may have some more honorable mentions later. Then my top 25.