I'm making the most definitive list of favorite movies ever.

For every year, I'm listing every movie I've seen and compare them all to each other asking one question; Which movie do I like more. Movies that score in the 80th percentile or higher, advance to the next round: Favorite of the Decade. After each Decade is done, an All Time list will be formed.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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)

Friday, January 21, 2011

#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.

Monday, January 17, 2011

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.*