Favoritest Movies of 1996

What a waste of a year of movies.  Take the bottom 60 titles on this list, I'll never watch any of them ever again.  We will not see a year this bad until 2010, but being fair 1996 is worse.  As I continue this trip back, I hope I don't come across another year that stinks as badly.  BUT, maybe just maybe its the number of movies I saw.  106!  That's the third highest count on my list following 1990 at 109 and 1994 at 112 movies seen.  So... maybe just maybe the more movies one sees the more crap they see.  That's a shame.  I was really hoping the the more you saw, the more likely you are to find hidden nuggets to treasure and enjoy...  Well, maybe there were... where's my optimists hat?  Oh, here it is covered in dust caked on by age.  Well look at you two...

There were two gems that I probably would not have seen at the time If I only saw the popular movies to see.  The Phantom is one of the worst marketed... screw the rhetoric here, the poster says "SLAM EVIL"  I have no idea what that means, but it feels lame to me.  It looks like it's trying to appeal to eight year olds, not real ones, but the tertiary characters on Leave it to Beaver.  I know we're a year before South Park here, but how could you not know that that poster and everything about the movie looks lame to... humans.  Everywhere, everywhen.  But, The Phantom is a good movie.  It's a fun to watch, Indiana Jones movie but the guy is in a purple body suit.  Best of all, on Blu-Ray this movie looks good, really really good.  To me this is the gold standard for how an old catalog title should be treated.  I've read some complaints about the video quality, but lets put things into perspective.  The Phantom is a BD from Lionsgate of a 1996 movie that grossed 17 million dollars.  And it looks almost brand new.  If an old popcorn flick that's life was somewhere between flop and bomb can look this nice; no movie you care about has any excuse.  The other nugget, was the first movie I saw by Peter Jackson.  It's fun too, but Peter Jackson's done better.  On to the list.

1. Independence Day
2. Star Trek: First Contact
3. The Rock
4. Hamlet
5. The Phantom
6. Mars Attacks!
7. The English Patient
8. Mission: Impossible
9. My Fellow Americans
10. Jerry Maguire
11. From Dusk Till Dawn
12. Muppet Treasure Island
13. Dragonheart
14. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
15. The Frighteners
16. Space Jam
17. Romeo + Juliet
18. Scream
19. The Long Kiss Goodnight
20. The Truth About Cats & Dogs
21. Escape from L.A., aka John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.
22. Ransom
23. Up Close & Personal
24. The Arrival
25. That Thing You Do!
26. The Ghost and the Darkness
27. Broken Arrow
28. Rumble in the Bronx
29. Swingers
30. Spy Hard
31. Tin Cup
32. Police Story 4: First Strike
33. Executive Decision
34. Jingle All the Way
35. A Time to Kill
36. Twister
37. Last Man Standing
38. The Craft
39. Bound
40. The People vs. Larry Flynt
41. Courage Under Fire
42. Happy Gilmore
43. Evita
44. Eraser
45. Multiplicity
46. Beautiful Girls
47. 101 Dalmatians
48. The First Wives Club
49. The Crow: City of Angels
50. The Nutty Professor
51. Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
52. Maximum Risk
53. Looking for Richard
54. Mulholland Falls
55. Dear God
56. Bed of Roses
57. Barb Wire
58. Daylight
59. Flipper
60. Phenomenon
61. Chain Reaction
62. Michael Collins
63. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
64. One Fine Day
65. Down Periscope
66. The Island of Dr. Moreau
67. Fargo
68. In Love and War
69. Michael
70. Dunston Checks In
71. Mary Reilly
72. Alaska
73. Bulletproof
74. Striptease
75. The Mirror Has Two Faces
76. Larger than Life
77. Extreme Measures
78. Ghosts of Mississippi
79. Sgt. Bilko
80. City Hall
81. She's the One
82. Mother
83. The Portrait of a Lady
84. The Adventures of Pinocchio
85. All Dogs Go to Heaven 2
86. Sleepers
87. The Preacher's Wife
88. The Associate
89. Diabolique
90. Jack
91. Eddie
92. Mr. Wrong
93. Heaven's Prisoners
94. Kingpin
95. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
96. Kazaam
97. The Crucible
98. The Fan
99. The Pillow Book
100. Thinner
101. The Stupids
102. Black Sheep
103. Joe's Apartment
104. Fear
105. The Cable Guy
106. Big Bully

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

#1 movie buff on GetGlue

All glory (if you can call it that) is fleeting.  But this morning, I saw that I'm GetGlue's top ranking movie buff.  probably won't be tommorow, and I'm still not sure what the point of the freaking site is.  But it's nice to get some... I've no idea what.

Favoritest Movies of 1997

Creating these lists is like taking a personality test.  We know who we are, but we can still learn from self examination.  To that end, I was a little shocked when I sorted the results, and Contact came away on top.  I saw Titanic 17 times in the theater, no exageration.  My father and I would go to the movies every week in these years of the nineties and for the end of 97 and first few months of 1998 it was Titanic.  I remember us standing, looking at the movies at the box office of Des Peres 14, probably in February of '98, and couldn't see a reason to not see Titanic.  Eventually, my father and I one weekend, Titanic was on such a small screen, and was so scratchy and dirty it just couldn't hit VHS soon enough.  Thinking back on a thought that honestly didn't occur to me the whole time looking at all of these movies; I didn't buy Titanic on Laser Disc, I did buy Contact.

This might be a good moment to say that These are not "best" lists.  I'm going to be making a page explaining how these lists are made, but the simple explanation is I look at two titles, and ask myself which one do I [presently] enjoy more?  With such a question there's no way to filter out guilty pleasures.  1997 required making 4,278 title to title comparisons.  Spice World came to a rank of .7258  compared to Good Will Hunting getting a .6398.  I know Spice World isn't "good", it's pop stars running around in mini skirts.  I just don't know a definition of 'good'.  I think "good" when syntactically modifying the noun 'movie' means that is of a quality approaching Oscar worthiness.  I'll contemplate that further the next time we take the family to an Annie Hall Celebration  with the kids doing some Diane Keaton cosplay, or when I stand in front of the Wii to play Lego Chariots of Fire.

Here's the list...

1. Contact
2. Titanic
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. Starship Troopers
5. The Devil's Advocate
6. Tomorrow Never Dies
7. The Fifth Element
8. Gattaca
9. Evangelion: Death and Rebirth
10. The Saint
11. L.A. Confidential
12. Men in Black
13. Hercules
14. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
15. Grosse Pointe Blank
16. Air Force One
17. MouseHunt
18. Cube
19. Clockwatchers
20. Private Parts
21. Out to Sea
22. The Game
23. Perfect Blue
24. Kull the Conqueror
25. A Life Less Ordinary
26. Spice World
27. Boogie Nights
28. Fools Rush In
29. Face/Off
30. Flubber
31. Wag the Dog
32. Good Will Hunting
33. The End of Evangelion
34. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
35. Scream 2
36. Absolute Power
37. The Postman
38. In & Out
39. Event Horizon
40. Alien Resurrection
41. George of the Jungle
42. Murder at 1600
43. Chasing Amy
44. Jackie Brown
45. Addicted to Love
46. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
47. Dante's Peak
48. Anaconda
49. As Good as It Gets
50. Mimic
51. The Full Monty
52. Picture Perfect
53. Seven Years in Tibet
54. Volcano
55. My Best Friend's Wedding
56. Spawn
57. The Relic
58. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
59. Conspiracy Theory
60. Liar Liar
61. Batman & Robin
62. The Edge
63. Fierce Creatures
64. Warriors of Virtue
65. Anastasia
66. Con Air
67. I Know What You Did Last Summer
68. Selena
69. Kundun
70. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
71. The Peacemaker
72. Home Alone 3
73. The Jackal
74. Breakdown
75. Donnie Brasco
76. Red Corner
77. Kiss the Girls
78. Turbulence
79. Metro
80. U Turn
81. Vegas Vacation
82. Playing God
83. Speed 2: Cruise Control
84. The Devil's Own
85. Bean
86. The Apostle
87. Steel
88. Air Bud
89. Good Burger
90. City of Industry
91. Gone Fishin'
92. One Night Stand
93. Fathers' Day

Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.

Special Honorable Mention:

Picture Perfect! At 52nd on my list, this movie did something for me I will eternally be grateful for.  On the soundtrack, was the song "Say What You Want" by Texas.  I enjoyed the song quite a bit, so I bought the album, not the movie soundtrack, but Texas White on Blonde.  

If I were to do these lists for musical album, it just might win... yeah, over Achtung Baby (doubtful there...) or more definitely The Joshua Tree.  Thank you for my (probably) 2nd favorite album of all time.*