Favoritest Movies of 1976

Once upon a time...

There was a box called television.  Locally in St. Louis we had somewhere between 6-8 stations depending on how much your antenna could pick up.  The three network affiliates (ABC, CBS, NBC, there was no such thing as FOX kiddies.) We had PBS, and two locally run stations; KPLR, the network that created Voltron, and KDNL.  There was also KNLC and C-13 (WCEE) out of Mt. Vernon IL.

I paid special attention to that station out of Mt. Vernon, as I couldn't do anything to get my TV to pick it up ever long enough to watch anything and never during daylight.  But, channel 13 would have made my childhood more interesting, an entire new channel!  It had different cartoons on at different times than KPLR and KDNL did.  This was greener grass, that I was reminded of every time I went to look for what to watch.  There were no DVR's or on screen program guides, we had to read a book to see what was on.  My grandmother subscribed to TV-Guide, an expense my father didn't like, nor did my grandfather.  My dad being a complete slut for all things home-entertainment eventually subscribed to TV-Guide.  My grandfather thought the TV guide (non-branded) that came with the newspaper was sufficient.  Accuracy and articles had me favoring TV guide.
 
Then, came cable television.  Still no on screen guide.  It didn't have TV Guide (for several years), but it's own, the size of a catalog.  And one station, that cost extra to have, had a program guide all to itself.

Early cable had a lot less original programming, and a lot more of what seemed to be, whatever they could get their hands on.  So, back when MTV showed almost nothing but music videos, and it was possible to catch The Empire Strikes Back on HBO, when Nickelodeon was only on during the day, and showed mostly programs from Canada.  The Disney Channel was doing it's damnedest to be the most special place on cable.  It was the farthest thing from the seemingly wall to wall sitcoms about rich spoiled brats, whining about everything except their perfectly white, straight teeth and pristine complexions.

Back then, The Disney Channel was the channel I turned to first thing in the morning, Good Morning Mickey actually made getting out of bed for grade school slightly less dreadful, and made the oatmeal or rice taste better.  And when the Disney Channel Magazine would come in the mail, I'd eagerly look through it to discover what they were offering up throughout the next month.  Condorman was one such discovery.  But, the biggest, the best was:

The world of Asterix is of a texture we don't easily find in American comics until Jeff Smith's Bone. Like Star Wars, Pixar and Looney Toons, It's for everyone, including children.  It's something you can grow old with.  When it's forgotten that that's the best elements of family entertainment, that it entertains the family, regardless of age, we create more barriers between each other, unnecessary borders within households and across generations.

1. The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
2. Logan's Run
3. All the President's Men
4. Network
5. At the Earth's Core
6. King Kong
7. Murder by Death
8. Rocky
9. The Smurfs and the Magic Flute
10. Futureworld
11. The Omen
12. Silent Movie
13. The Outlaw Josey Wales
14. Midway
15. The Enforcer
16. Carrie
17. The Bad News Bears
18. In the Realm of the Senses
19. The Shootist
20. Lipstick
21. The Shaggy D.A.
22. The Man Who Fell to Earth
23. Family Plot
24. Robin and Marian
25. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
26. Silver Streak
27. Shout at the Devil
28. Freaky Friday
29. Marathon Man

Favoritest Movies of 1977

So, not yet age two, or close enough, and Han Solo activates the hyperdrive and I get turned into a nerd for life.  All the top-ever movies will get their own write up, so this is not Star Wars' moment in the sun.  But, it's the first movie I saw in the theater, and there's nothing else to talk about in 1977.

Oh shit.

Alright, let's talk about you.  Let's say that you're actually a more original, more intelligent and more creative movie than Star Wars.  Let's imagine a world, not far off, (ours) where you may have deserved "Best Picture".  You have two or three moments where you actually are self aware and creative enough to see how movies can go beyond their narrative conventions, and be an intellectually interactive experiential medium.  I get that, probably only, because I was comparing you to Star Wars.  Just as Star Wars ripoffs, for the most part thought they could spray paint junk, and blow it up in slow motion, and say anything without it even being intelligible (if you just thought ""the prequel trilogy", get over it!  See a new movie or three...).   The movies you influenced mister Annie Hall, did not even notice your narrative originality, and instead acted like every guy with blue balls and an Arriflex SHOULD make a movie about just how hard his spoiled brat life is.  Sure, if Lucas made a Kurosawa film into a Douglas Trumball looking Flash Gordon serial in England, then all you did was make a '60's French movie in New York in the '70's.  And, after that the only movie that seemed to learn any actual positive lessons from you was the second Austin Powers movie.

I don't think you won Best Picture.  I think you were in the right place to benefit from jealousy, like Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, and The Hurt Locker.  You've been an ongoing life lesson that I was just reminded of the other night.  Taste is fickle.  There is so little separating the popular from the pariah, that often it's just the movement of the flock.

The other night we were watching a movie that took dramatic license with the life of William Shakespeare, with spectacular performances and production values told an all but completely impossible, but no less intriguing fiction in Elizabethan times.  Which one were we watching?

 

Romantic or Tragic?

Entertaining, or Challenging?

Satisfying or Piquing?

Lauded or Scorned?

The story goes that Lucas and Spielberg swapped points on Close Encounters and Star Wars, both thinking the other had the bigger hit.  So, if they don't know what's good, why do so many others act like experts?  The question might require more thought than that.  I've no idea what, if anything is actually "good", I just know what I like, in relation to whatever I'm comparing it to...

1. Star Wars
2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
3. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown
4. The Hobbit
5. The Spy Who Loved Me
6. Oh, God!
7. Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
8. The Amazing Spider-Man
9. A Bridge Too Far
10. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
11. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
12. The War in Space
13. Kentucky Fried Movie
14. Annie Hall
15. MacArthur
16. Smokey and the Bandit
17. High Anxiety
18. The Gauntlet
19. Cross of Iron
20. Saturday Night Fever
21. Airport '77
22. Pete's Dragon
23. The Island of Dr. Moreau
24. Exorcist II: The Heretic
25. Orca
26. Wizards

Favoritest Movies of 1978

We join the 1978 list results already in progress:  A man who looks like Alec Baldwin enters that room full of movies ,like in the old Netflix commercials.

"Listen up movies of 1978!  The good news is -- you're tired.  The bad news is you've got, all you got, the rest of civilization to languish on cable, home video and on-demand to be watchable movies again, starting tonight. Starting with tonight's viewings. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this years favoritism contest.  As you all know, first prize is being a good and loved movie. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's being a television pilot. Third prize is you're tired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got scripts. The script monkeys, carefully selected pigtailed macaques, worked tirelessly and cluelessly in a sweatshop near the Jewelry District.  So be interesting, be movies."


Okay, there's more than two good movies from '78, but, a TV pilot being one of the better ones, makes the year look bad.  I'm sure I've committed some sin by not praising Animal House.  It's proof of quality is just how high it made it on this list.  I'm just not a partier.

It's not going far, so this is our last chance to talk about a movie that did make the next round; Message from Space.  But, a movie that is going to probably place in the All-Time Top 10, owes a lot to it.  I mean, almost everything after leaving Jabba's palace, and the closer you get to the ending, the closer you get to Jedi.  This is one of the more engaging and better executed Star Wars try-to-be's.  I've tried to see as many as one can, though the line between ripoff, and greenlit because of the success of is subject to controversy, and hurt feelings.  You hear, read all sorts of stories, and the bigger the movie the more it has.  Message from Space is an anime come to life, and Return of the Jedi, is Message from Space come to life.  Science fiction led me to discover a lot of anime and still does to this day.  I've also always wondered how many other major movies have had secret anime influence, since seeing shades of Gall Force in Terminator 2.  Why, is that some Space Battleship Yamato in Das Boot?   I suspect they'll never admit it.

1. Superman: The Movie
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Force 10 from Navarone
4. Grease
5. Coma
6. The Cat from Outer Space
7. Message from Space
8. National Lampoon's Animal House
9. Jaws 2
10. The Lord of the Rings
11. Death on the Nile
12. Harper Valley PTA
13. The Deer Hunter
14. Drunken Master
15. The Amazing Captain Nemo
16. Watership Down
17. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
18. The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
19. The Cheap Detective
20. Capricorn One
21. Return from Witch Mountain
22. Dawn of the Dead
23. Revenge of the Pink Panther
24. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
25. Eyes of Laura Mars
26. The Boys from Brazil
27. The Swarm
28. Damien: Omen II
29. Heaven Can Wait
30. Corvette Summer
31. Every Which Way But Loose

Favoritest Movies of 1979

 The top 4 all share something in common, we owned them on CED videodisc. Our Realistic CED-1 felt like my own personal home entertainment system in our basement.

Rainbows!

My dad dove into this format with all sorts of optimism and excitement, but then stuck it in the basement.  At the time, he was also put drop ceiling in the basement, but I think he lost interest in home theater with getting cable TV not much more than a year after getting this.  I've read that the needle on CED players needed to be changed every 500 hours of use.  Ours beat the snot out of that, heck the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie saw at least 200 hours of play.  I'd occasionally watch TV off of the antenna down there, King Kong ('76), The Martian Chronicles, and V, and The Muppet Show just about every weeknight.  I forget if Laverne & Shirley preceded or followed The Muppet Show, but it was something my 7 year old self had no interest in.  I'd like to think my tastes have changed in the last 30 years, but 1979 just hasn't weathered the way most other years have.

1. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
2. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie
3. The Black Hole
4. The Muppet Movie
5. Alien
6. Moonraker
7. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
8. Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro
9. Time After Time
10. The First Great Train Robbery
11. Mad Max
12. Apocalypse Now
13. The China Syndrome
14. The Lathe of Heaven
15. Monty Python's Life of Brian
16. Escape from Alcatraz
17. The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
18. The Concorde ... Airport '79
19. Dracula
20. The Shape of Things to Come
21. Zulu Dawn
22. Rocky II
23. Hair
24. Caligula
25. The Black Stallion
26. Love at First Bite
27. Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
28. C.H.O.M.P.S.
29. Meatballs
30. Butch and Sundance: The Early Days
31. Kramer vs. Kramer
32. More American Graffiti
33. The Jerk

Wait, we had all of the ones she mentioned by name... Maybe they DIDN'T want me watching TV! Thank you Youtube, you've explained my childhood.

Favoritest 50 Movies of the '80's!!!

Completely breaking format, I can't in good conscience put a poster on top of a list where only five non-genre movies even make this list.  Big deal that Empire is my favorite movie of the '80's.  That tells me nothing.  That embodies, nothing.  Recognizing that the '80's was to me, at the time the golden age of sci-fi movies, and one thing educated me, and opened my world to so much more than just watching Entertainment Tonight or waiting to see what would be the 'cool' movie accepted by the masses would be.  Every issue of Starlog was like a Con before I'd ever go to a convention, like a RSS feed before the internet.  Through Starlog, I fell in love with Blade Runner before having ever seen the movie.  To be fair, because of  the below photo in an issue of Starlog, I also fell in love with this series:

  Galactica 1980 !

I looked forward to this series. I couldn't wait to see it. I apparently missed it.  Actually, I had seen an episode, but had no idea that what I saw was Galactic 1980, I still have no idea that invisible Vipers and softball games are Battlestar Galactica! So, seeing this picture and dreaming of the day when I would behold this glorious show!  See, She's in a WHITE Colonial Warrior uniform.  Well, the only time Colonial Vipers were in white uniforms was when they were aboard the ship of lights!  So, naturally, my infantile fanboy self just assumed that the plot would deepen with 1980, that Galactica would become more mystery filled and epic.




So, as for the movies, and the magazine that brought me so much enjoyment related to them;

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Return of the Jedi
3. Dune
4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
5. Akira
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
7. Heavy Metal
8. The Transformers: The Movie
9. Project A-ko
10. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
11. Blade Runner
12. 2010
13. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
14. The Dark Crystal
15. Highlander
16. Aliens
17. Superman II
18. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
19. RoboCop
20. Tron
21. Back to the Future
22. The Final Countdown
23. Battle Beyond the Stars
24. Die Hard
25. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
26. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
27. Ghostbusters
28. Gandahar
29. The NeverEnding Story
30. Predator
31. U2: Rattle and Hum
32. The Princess Bride
33. The Abyss
34. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
35. Flash Gordon
36. G.I. Joe: The Movie
37. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
38. No Way Out
39. Top Gun
40. The Terminator
41. Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
42. Willow
43. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
44. Labyrinth
45. Koyaanisqatsi
46. Henry V
47. Gremlins
48. Venus Wars
49. Spaceballs
50. The Living Daylights

Favoritest Movies of 1980

Wow.  Hooray.  My hero.  What a big tough movie you are, imagine that Empire Strikes back could take on a whole year and come out on top... You'll probably win the decade as well, see you in the All Time round Empire!  Well, let's see who came in second...

What?  I feel the need to question myself here...
Q: Excuse me me, but how the Frakes in Riker's name does Flash Gordon end up with the second spot for 1980?  It's no Raiders fiasco, but you may be out of your own mind, to the extent that you could end up talking to yourself, and typing while doing it!

A: Superman II was a childhood favorite, but if you watch Superman II once a year, just once a year from, say ages 7 to 17; you can feel yourself getting older.  You start questioning just how nicely done some parts of it are, and how... (lengthy bull crap later) and where did the cellophane S come from?


Flash Gordon has gotten a boost, in just the past year or so, probably worth 7-8 places.  Actually, ironically, right this second as I'm typing this, the wife and daughter are watching Flash Gordon in the other room!  It has multigenerational appeal, even today!  Why could that be?  There's a clue on the poster... "filmed in Todd-AO" (My father used to rave about Todd-AO movies, and it was probably the second thing he thought off when thinking about Elizabeth Taylor).  The Flash Gordon movie of my youth was a dull pan and scan on tv movie, but having seen it in HD.  It's, well, beautiful.

More importantly, Flash is a movie that hits it's target.  It is everything it wants to be.  And movies that accomplish that are almost always well regarded, if not loved directly proportionally to the appeal of their goal.  For instance, if you like crime movies, than Godfather, Scarface and Goodfella's are your classics.  Hard Sci-Fi fan? 2001 and Blade Runner... Disney fare.. Lion King and Cinderella for the Classic Disney fare crowd.  Sometimes movies mix appeal base, they're still perfect, but it's where you land on both appeal orientations.  Flash Gordon is a movie that feels like it came out of an old MGM vault, like a victory lap made after Wizard of Oz.  It's everything George Lucas claimed he wanted Star Wars to be, except "believable" looking.  Flash trades realistic for retro deco.

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Flash Gordon
3. Superman II
4. Battle Beyond the Stars
5. The Final Countdown
6. Airplane!
7. Raise the Titanic
8. Kagemusha
9. Hangar 18
10. The Blues Brothers
11. Midnight Madness
12. Caddyshack
13. Oh, God! Book II
14. Altered States
15. The Shining
16. The Day Time Ended
17. The Return of the King
18. Private Benjamin
19. Stir Crazy
20. Somewhere in Time
21. Xanadu
22. Herbie Goes Bananas
23. Popeye
24. The Elephant Man
25. Galaxina
26. The Gods Must Be Crazy
27. Coal Miner's Daughter
28. The Watcher in the Woods
29. American Gigolo
30. Any Which Way You Can
31. Urban Cowboy
32. Ordinary People

Favoritest Movies of 1981

WTF?

1981.  We're talking about 19, EIGHTY, Freaking ONE!  The year that practically birthed the decade no one can stop talking about!  The first Space Shuttle launch, Ronald Regan becomes president. On television, Dynasty, Fall Guy, Hill Street Blues, heck just on Saturday morning cartoons we get Smurfs and Spider-man and his Amazing Friends.

Aside from all of that geekery, one movie dominates the box office, and goes on to get nine Academy Award nominations, winning five, and being robbed of best picture, sorry Best Picture by aspiring Olympic runners (Though Harrison Ford will run with Vangelis music in 1982 so Hah,)  How bad was this robbery?  Raiders of the Lost Ark has a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer of 94% (All Critics) to Chariots of Fire's 87% (All Critics).  AFI All time 100 list, Raiders is #60! Chariots doesn't even place.  Their Heroes and Villians list; Indiana Jones is the #2 hero!  Above James Bond and Rick from Casablanca!  Sure, he's below Atticus Finch, but we all know Atticus wouldn't make it to the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol!

So how in Frakes name could I pick, like, favor a movie with a RTT score of 60%.  I didn't know either.  It was hard.  Almost Empire vs. Jedi hard.  Raiders is a far superior movie to Heavy Metal.  It is one of the greatest achievements ever.  Seriously.  I wouldn't be surprised if that poster wasn't composed like the Mona Lisa just because the movie was honestly a rear kicking cultural masterpiece.  But head to head, I chose Heavy Metal.  We all want to see more movies like Raiders.  That Star Wars scale of fun, adventure, tension, the pleasant sensation of having our brain beaten to putty while our eyes were lovingly effed out of existence and our ears floated in pure euphoria.

We'll never get that.  We shouldn't want that, we wouldn't want to live in a universe that flat.  If everything were perfect, we'd become bored with perfection, start noticing differences, and even artificially create standards of quality and differentiate the essentially homogeneous media.  (Carnac the Magnificent says you're thinking: "That's what we do with movies today!")

I do want more movies like Heavy Metal, I wish we got a Heavy Metal movie every year.  An annual Animated Sci-Fi anthology showcasing a variety of styles, and stories with a a broad yet central feel, showing just how big, and in some ways, hard to define nerdom is.  We'd be better off having more movies like Heavy Metal, but sadly it's almost completely unique.  Raiders gets the #2 spot, since, I'm always seeing movies wishing they were Raiders.  Fine, I like them, some I even love... okay, I don't love any of them.  I love Raiders, Captain America and I need a few more dates before we commit, and National Treasure and I have agreed to see other people, but remain the closest of friends, not ruling out benefits.  The best part of cinematic polyamory; movies don't get jealous.  Heavy Metal, will never take offense at my wish for a harem of Heavy Metal, it just might punish me with less than better episodes of Liquid Television.

1. Heavy Metal
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. The Great Muppet Caper
4. Clash of the Titans
5. History of the World: Part I
6. Escape from New York
7. Time Bandits
8. Excalibur
9. Outland
10. For Your Eyes Only
11. Stripes
12. Condorman
13. An American Werewolf in London
14. Das Boot
15. The Legend of the Lone Ranger
16. Dragonslayer
17. Omen III: The Final Conflict
18. The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie
19. Scanners
20. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
21. Quest for Fire
22. Chariots of Fire
23. Gallipoli
24. Heartbeeps
25. Reds
26. Tarzan, the Ape Man
27. The Evil Dead
28. The Cannonball Run
29. Arthur
30. The Howling
31. Sharky's Machine
32. Body Heat
33. The Professional
34. On Golden Pond
35. American Pop
36. Tuck Everlasting
37. The Devil and Max Devlin
38. Bustin' Loose

Favoritest Movies of 1982

The lists are getting shorter, the backlog of this project is nearing completion.  The red letters denoting disliked movies says goodbye, it'll stick to hating newer movies.  I'm actually pretty fond of a little more than the top 20 from this year, and the top 6 are all childhood favorites.  There was a time when I'd say I didn't get to see E.T. as a child.  Theatrically this is true, but I was also still a child when I said it. I only saw Wrath of Khan theatrically, in the same theater my father asked my mother to marry him in several years earlier.  I was a bit emotionally attached to that room myself, as it was where I'd seen Empire for the first time.

I saw Tron, and most other movies on a big screen outdoors at the Union Electric Club, in Valley Park.  It doesn't exist anymore.  It was off of Vance Rd.  After entering  you'd see ball fields, a jet plane, a train caboose! That's the actual caboose pictured to the left.  We'd park on a white gravel lot.  There was a playground, bisected by a slightly elevated sidewalk going back to a large white, homely looking two story building.  The Sidewalks had creatures, mostly bugs painted on them.  When I was very small, I even found them a bit scary.  The playground equipment was far from what we'd consider safe, this entire place was even then a relic of an earlier era, but I didn't know that at the time.  We'd bring our own drinks and snacks.  My parents and grandparents were just that cheap.  We didn't pay to get in, it was for the UE employee's and retiree's and their families.  There was a long area of picnic style tables, end to end.  The floor was halved logs that had been laquered.  It was open air, and lit by yellow light at night.  The big attraction there was the bingo game that would go on, sometimes I believe during the movie.  Movies, baseball, playground, bingo, snow cones, heat, bugs, peeling paint, playground fixtures made of wood and steel.  It was in high ground, nothing but trees in sight.

I haven't thought of it in years.  I didn't plan on going on so long about it.  I had nothing to say when I say when I sat down to slap up this list.  But, I guess digging up old memories was the original point of this exercise.  Hundreds and hundreds of people enjoyed that place, I'd imagine most, if not all the ones who played bingo are long dead.  And nothing remains of it.  It's torn down.  I found one plea online for information, pictures of the place, and that was placed in 1998.  These lists, Facebook.  We're all loading the internet like the Pharaoh's loaded  up their pyramids.  Not morbidly so, nor necessarily with mortality in mind, but as a communal, digital time capsule of not items, but experiences.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
2. The Dark Crystal
3. Blade Runner
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
5. Tron
6. The Secret of NIMH
7. Koyaanisqatsi
8. An Officer and a Gentleman
9. Conan the Barbarian
10. Airplane II: The Sequel
11. Gandhi
12. The Thing
13. Poltergeist
14. Pink Floyd The Wall
15. The Beastmaster
16. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
17. Tootsie
18. Android
19. The Shaolin Temple
20. Annie
21. Firefox
22. The Year of Living Dangerously
23. Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
24. Timerider
25. Swamp Thing
26. Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip
27. Evil Under the Sun
28. The Last Unicorn
29. The World According to Garp
30. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
31. Rocky III
32. Personal Best
33. Night Shift
34. First Blood
35. Megaforce
36. Honkytonk Man
37. 48 Hours
38. Porky's
39. Death Wish II
40. Fanny and Alexander

Favoritest Movies of 2011

I was kinda hoping that this list, would be topped by a fitting farewell to Harry Potter.  Harry Potter on my lists has been, sort of a Neville Longbottom.  Not to any fault of the series, but to an abundance of nerdy, geeky, blockbustery cinematic goodness.  I wouldn't call Potter's decade a golden age for genre movies; during the interim after the Archon Masquerade, but before the awards, music was playing, movie music, the genre's greatest hits.  The golden age was from Jaws to Jedi.  This is also why Prometheus has such a special anticipation.  Ridley Scott hasn't done a Sci-Fi movie since the Golden Age, and both of his contributions to Sci-Fi back then, are still just as watchable, no, even more watchable today, if only because the average home theater today is really delivering a better experience than most of the few screen, dimly projected, an old lady's hair in your way, my arm is stuck to the seat,would someone close the door the sun is shining on the screen (Did NOT make that up!!!!) theaters we got to view Empire, and Khan in.

I haven't seen most of the movies that are topping the "critical" lists yet.  Most of those lists though are made out of buzz, and fashion.  Almost no one ever says what they like anymore.  Well, I apparently liked X-Men: First Class quite a bit.  I almost can't imagine how much I'd love this movie it it'd been about Jean, Scott, Warren and Hank.  But, had they been in this movie, it wouldn't have been about Erik and Charles.  That's the beauty of the X-Men comics, the good characters' powers and code names are completely irrelevant.  Cyclops the guy who can shoot beams out of his eyes isn't important.  Scott, the guy Jean chooses over Warren, and later Logan, is.  Sounds a bit like Twilight... I'll gag later.  But I don't think Bella ever becomes a God powered, nearly immortal entity that is wanted dead by galactic superpowers, nor has a clone who will make a demonic pact unleashing Hell on earth, or that their child will come back from the future to be a cybernetic bad-ass!  On to the list!

Oh, at #14:  That's this...

An animated anthology starring Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan.  NOT a Ryan Reynolds stripped naked except for underwear to fight the potty monster who can be defeated by what every rookie lantern is taught in basic training.  Mad at me for spoiling it?  No.  Because you deserve a better Green Lantern movie than that.  Oh, and If I hate the live action one so much, why is it at #37?  Ahead of much better movies?  I LOVE Green Lantern.  I love the idea of it being a live action movie just that much.  There were some... a few good, and enjoyable things of that movie.  Pirates 4 is a fine movie, just disappointing to it's pedigree.  And, Game of Shadows... I'll revisit it at some point.  Good friends with good taste love this movie.  But, for right now, Sherlock Neo and the Sundance Kid in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen just doesn't do it for me.

1. X-Men: First Class
2. Harry Potter the Deathly Hallows: Part II
3. Captain America: The First Avenger
4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
5. Thor
6. The Muppets
7. Paul
8. Conan the Barbarian
9. Too Big to Fail
10. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
11. All-Star Superman
12. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
13. Fright Night
14. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights
15. Source Code
16. Batman: Year One
17. Paranormal Activity 3
18. The Adventures of Tintin
19. Kung Fu Panda 2
20. The Adjustment Bureau
21. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
22. Larry Crowne
23. Cowboys & Aliens
24. Bad Teacher
25. Rango
26. Thor: Tales of Asgard
27. Your Highness
28. The Three Musketeers
29. Fast Five
30. Arthur
31. Midnight in Paris
32. Sucker Punch
33. Super 8
34. No Strings Attached
35. Red Riding Hood
36. Final Destination 5
37. Green Lantern
38. Drive Angry
39. The Lincoln Lawyer
40. Mars Needs Moms!
41. Season of the Witch
42. The Green Hornet
43. Red State
44. The Smurfs
45. Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides
46. Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
47. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
48. Bridesmaids
49. Immortals
50. The Tree of Life
51. Just Go with It
52. Margin Call
53. The Help
54. Cars 2
55. Battle: Los Angeles
56. The Eagle
57. Gnomeo and Juliet
58. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1
59. Rio
60. Priest
61. Limitless
62. The Sunset Limited
63. I Am Number Four
64. Sanctum
65. Almighty Thor
66. Hall Pass

Favoritest Movies of 1983

This is the first list for comparisons against a member of the OT.  Maybe the second place movie should get its poster shown here...

There.  The Meaning of Life.  Philosophers spent centuries trying to figure it out, proving that they weren't nearly as brilliant or as funny as Monty Python.  Seriously, Meaning of Life isn't a satisfying post topper... Jedi though is year overkill.  It's looking at a top 5 ever seat by the end of this.

Return of the Jedi dominated the entire year, especially if you were 8 years old.  Last day of 2nd grade, we got to watch a movie, and the teachers said that they wanted to get Return of the Jedi, but it wasn't available, so we got to watch Star Wars.  Best day of 2nd grade.

1. Return of the Jedi
2. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
3. Nate and Hayes
4. Never Say Never Again
5. WarGames
6. Octopussy
7. Twilight Zone: The Movie
8. Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island
9. Sudden Impact
10. Blue Thunder
11. The Right Stuff
12. Fire and Ice
13. The Keep
14. National Lampoon's Vacation
15. Bill Cosby: Himself
16. Trading Places
17. Brainstorm
18. Superman III
19. The Big Chill
20. Rock and Rule
21. The Dead Zone
22. Risky Business
23. To Be or Not to Be
24. Hercules
25. Project A
26. Terms of Endearment
27. Mr. Mom
28. The Star Chamber
29. Strange Invaders
30. The Outsiders
31. Flashdance
32. Lone Wolf McQuade
33. Valley Girl
34. Silkwood
35. Videodrome
36. Spacehunter
37. All the Right Moves
38. Eddie and the Cruisers
39. Christine
40. The Man with Two Brains
41. Max Dugan Returns
42. Yor Hunter From The Future
43. D.C. Cab
44. Psycho II
45. Easy Money
46. Scarface
47. Staying Alive
48. A Christmas Story
49. Jaws 3-D

Favoritest Movies of 1984

Wow, what a year.  When you want to say; 'they don't make them like that anymore!' Point here, 1984.  You will hate parts of this list.  You'll disagree with big segments of it.  You'll cry fowl, question my sanity... but you too will have a handful or two of all time favorites, or movies you just plain love from this year.  I won't go into the winner, as the highest echelon of my favorite movies ever will each get a spotlight essay, and Dune practically has a reserved seat, spoiler, I also hate this movie, and think it has many many flaws.  Either way; 27 years ago today, it came to theaters, and now wins it's year 100%!

Happy anniversary Dune!

1. Dune
2. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
3. 2010
4. Ghostbusters
5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
6. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
7. The Terminator
8. The NeverEnding Story
9. Gremlins
10. Beverly Hills Cop
11. The Natural
12. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
13. Night of the Comet
14. Starman
15. The Karate Kid
16. The Last Starfighter
17. Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
18. Amadeus
19. Police Academy
20. The Bounty
21. Top Secret!
22. Dreamscape
23. The Muppets Take Manhattan
24. Splash
25. Romancing the Stone
26. Runaway
27. A Nightmare on Elm Street
28. The Return of Godzilla (also known as "Godzilla 1985")
29. Cloak & Dagger
30. The Killing Fields
31. The Woman in Red
32. The Dungeonmaster
33. Tightrope
34. Footloose
35. The Warrior and the Sorceress
36. Sword of the Valiant
37. Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
38. Tank
39. Supergirl
40. City Heat
41. 1984
42. All of Me
43. The Philadelphia Experiment
44. Red Dawn
45. Cannonball Run II
46. This Is Spinal Tap
47. Firestarter
48. Moscow on the Hudson
49. Swing Shift
50. Micki + Maude
51. The River
52. Revenge of the Nerds
53. C.H.U.D.
54. Missing in Action
55. Sixteen Candles
56. The Cotton Club
57. Against All Odds
58. A Passage to India
59. Bolero
60. Bachelor Party
61. The Naked Face
62. Purple Rain
63. Making the Grade
64. The Brother from Another Planet
65. Just the Way You Are
66. Rhinestone
67. Children of the Corn

Favoritest Movies of 1985

There's something unsatisfying about this.  Yay, the popular movie won... Back to the Future isn't a geeky movie or a nerdy movie.  It's the geek movie that your parents liked too.  I was kinda rooting for Starchaser, but then things like honesty creep into the equation.  As much as I do enjoy Starchaser, it's far from Back to the Future, and that can be said for pretty much every movie except Explorers in 1985.  I'd do a gag about the perfect 1985 movie, but you're looking at it.  A teen involved in some screwy science stuff, nearly a dozen on just my list.

The real shocker is second place, A View to a Kill.  This is far from my favorite Bond movie, and I was shocked, even almost ashamed when I saw that it scored so high. But, there is a remnant of remembering the ad for it in the newspaper, wanting to see it in the theater, and not getting to. My first theatrical Bond would be The Living Daylights.  A shock, a surprise, and somehow it fits. It's aged better than many movies on this list, plus, I really dig The Saint and John Steed running around for a bit.

Even though so many titles from these year seem almost scared because of the age we were, or the memories they're attached to, when they have to compete with each other, most of these movies become mortal.  The Breakfast Club is a legendary movie, and seminal to our generation, but St. Elmo's fire wants that spot too.

1. Back to the Future
2. A View to a Kill
3. Explorers
4. Vampire Hunter D
5. Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
6. Brazil
7. Enemy Mine
8. Silverado
9. Ran
10. Legend
11. Pale Rider
12. Clue
13. Young Sherlock Holmes
14. Return to Oz
15. Commando
16. Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
17. The Breakfast Club
18. The Black Cauldron
19. The Goonies
20. Cocoon
21. Weird Science
22. The Quiet Earth
23. Red Sonja
24. St. Elmo's Fire
25. Ladyhawke
26. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
27. The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission
28. King Solomon's Mines
29. Fletch
30. My Science Project
31. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
32. Real Genius
33. Transylvania 6-5000
34. Here Come the Littles
35. Fright Night
36. Jagged Edge
37. Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
38. Rocky IV
39. Teen Wolf
40. Rambo: First Blood Part II
41. The Jewel of the Nile
42. Silver Bullet
43. Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird
44. European Vacation
45. Witness
46. Desperately Seeking Susan
47. Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
48. The Care Bears Movie
49. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
50. Prizzi's Honor
51. Murphy's Romance
52. Out of Africa
53. Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer
54. The Peanut Butter Solution
55. The Man with One Red Shoe
56. Mask
57. El caballero del dragón
58. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge
59. Day of the Dead
60. Once Bitten
61. Creature
62. Santa Claus
63. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
64. Invasion U.S.A.
65. Summer Rental
66. Heaven Help Us
67. Death Wish 3
68. Turk 182!
69. The Falcon and the Snowman

Favoritest Movies of 1986

At the outset of the 1986 pairings, I thought; 'If a good movie gets left behind this is the year they'll get left behind from.'  One of those I know I'll hear arguments about, requires a confession; I just don't like Ferris Bueller's Day Off as much as you.  It's a fun movie, it's good, it's memorable, it's quotable, and it's made for every person who's ever been content with a C+ on a report card, who 'just enough' was acceptable for.  There's nothing wrong with that; it can keep the lights on and beer in the fridge, but I don't drink beer either, or less relevantly eat any ethnic food that I can think of.  But, I analyzed Bueller on his own merits, and ignored that the cast contains Ben Stein, who is human tea tree oil to this lowly ant.   

One of the hardest calls to make in the entire history of making these lists: Star Trek IV vs Project A-Ko.  I couldn't let it go to a tie.  Really the entire lineup of the top 4 were difficult pairings to decide, and I'd looked for poster images for each of them, I almost ruled against Transformers because it was on the blog wallpaper, but because I had no real internal debate that Transformers should top A-Ko, then logically I must like Transformers more than Star Trek IV... but their positions may change in the decade race.  I can see now 1986 will be going with a major contingent into the finals, probably everything from Big Trouble in Little China up.

but not poster composition

Captain EO


For most of the pairings, a movie was on the list and competing that, when near completion, I had to eliminate, Captain EO.  A long time ago, when compiling the titles, Looney Tunes presented a problem of length, and I'd decided not to include them.  I haven't been including Pixar shorts, but EO at 17 minutes is a bit longer than most of these, it's far from long enough to be a "movie".  I've included TV movies, direct to video movies, OVA, I've had the broadest consideration of what is a movie, but I can't go that short.
We can imagine that Captain EO was a glimpse of what we didn't get in 1986; Episode VII or I.  Though a bit of it's look is less sophisticated than even Return of the Jedi, It's kinda doing a Ginger Rogers 'backwards and in heels' trick by looking like a Star Wars movie, in 3D.  On top of that, the sci-fi update on the Thriller zombies were the prototypes of the Borg and their Queen.  If Captain EO had been a feature, it would have been easily top-10 for the year.  Even as it was, a shallow, brief, half music video, it was in the 70th percentile, but EPCOT is still my favorite of the parks.  I wish the crap were taken off spaceship earth, and I wish the... I wish EPCOT would return to its nerdier, closer to original state. 

It's a bit funny the way giving a tie to two movies works out; in last place, The Money Pit had a tie with Armed and Dangerous.  Armed and Dangerous shared a tie vote with Club Paradise, which had a tie with Hoosiers, (Okay, I know what you just thought, but Club Paradise had Peter O'Toole in it!) which had a tie with SpaceCamp, which had a tie with The Great Mouse Detective, which had a tie with The Karate Kid, Part II, which had a tie with Big Trouble in Little China, which had a tie with Labyrinth.


Well here's the list with the most rewatchable top 5 probably of all the lists so far.

1. The Transformers: The Movie
2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
3. Project A-ko
4. Highlander
5. Aliens
6. Labyrinth
7. Top Gun
8. Invaders from Mars
9. Laputa: Castle in the Sky
10. Big Trouble in Little China
11. Flight of the Navigator
12. The Karate Kid, Part II
13. Howard the Duck
14. Short Circuit
15. King Kong Lives
16. Crocodile Dundee
17. The Great Mouse Detective
18. SpaceCamp
19. Little Shop of Horrors
20. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
21. Heartbreak Ridge
22. Iron Eagle
23. The Fly
24. Black Moon Rising
25. An American Tail
26. The Big Easy
27. Lucas
28. The Golden Child
29. Raw Deal
30. Platoon
31. Hoosiers
32. Manhunter
33. The Delta Force
34. Ruthless People
35. Solarbabies
36. Gung Ho!
37. GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords
38. F/X
39. Castaway
40. Critters
41. Pirates
42. Peggy Sue Got Married
43. ¡Three Amigos!
44. Firewalker
45. Stand by Me
46. Club Paradise
47. The Manhattan Project
48. The Color of Money
49. 9½ Weeks
50. Pretty in Pink
51. Cobra
52. The Mosquito Coast
53. Poltergeist II: The Other Side
54. Troll 2
55. The Morning After
56. Jumpin' Jack Flash
57. House
58. Armed and Dangerous
59. Murphhy's Law
60. Down and Out in Beverly Hills
61. No Mercy
62. Shanghai Surprise
63. The Money Pit

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

Favoritest Movies of 1987

This was the type of year that makes these lists so fun to do.  There was no runaway winner, no obvious one at the outset, when the final scores appeared, less than 2% separates The 4th spot from the top spot, but Robo deserves to be there.  This is one of those results that made me actually appreciate the movie more for discovering that it won.  For every argument that The Princess Bride deserves it more, the same might be able to be said for No Way Out.  I feel I cheated a certain movie to the bottom of the list, but there are scarcely few more movies that deserve the confines of Abaddon than Jaws: The Revenge.  It's director Joseph Sergent also directed one of the movies that will appear, probably somewhere close to the top of the All-Time list, Colossus The Forbin Project, as will the original Jaws.  The near perfection found in both of these makes this all the worse.  Would this movie have been any dumber if the shark wore a Hawaiian shirt?

Anyway, I still recall us renting Robocop on VHS for the first time.  Yup, that's how I first saw it.

1. RoboCop
2. The Princess Bride
3. No Way Out
4. Predator
5. G.I. Joe: The Movie
6. Spaceballs
7. The Living Daylights
8. Lethal Weapon
9. The Brave Little Toaster
10. Beverly Hills Cop II
11. *batteries not included
12. Empire of the Sun
13. The Untouchables
14. The Last Emperor
15. Masters of the Universe
16. Wings of Honneamise
17. The Monster Squad
18. Broadcast News
19. Dirty Dancing
20. Innerspace
21. Project A-Ko 2: Daitokuji zaibatsu no inbô
22. Swimming to Cambodia
23. Gor
24. The Fourth Protocol
25. The Running Man
26. Evil Dead II
27. Harry and the Hendersons
28. Wings of Desire
29. The Chipmunk Adventure
30. Mannequin
31. The Lost Boys
32. Eddie Murphy Raw
33. Full Metal Jacket
34. Wall Street
35. Project X
36. The Big Easy
37. The Puppetoon Movie
38. 3 Men and a Baby
39. Adventures in Babysitting
40. Good Morning, Vietnam
41. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
42. The Witches of Eastwick
43. Time of the Apes
44. Dragnet
45. Ishtar
46. Some Kind of Wonderful
47. Stakeout
48. Summer School
49. Fatal Attraction
50. Hellraiser
51. The Secret of My Succe$s
52. Raising Arizona
53. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
54. Benji the Hunted
55. Blind Date
56. Outrageous Fortune
57. Cherry 2000
58. Overboard
59. Who's That Girl
60. Roxanne
61. Light of Day
62. Suspect
63. Leonard Part 6
64. La Bamba
65. Teen Wolf Too
66. Baby Boom
67. Throw Momma from the Train
68. Ernest Goes to Camp
69. Hello Again
70. Moonstruck
71. Prince of Darkness
72. Over the Top
73. Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise
74. Burglar
75. Tin Men
76. Like Father Like Son
77. The Principal
78. Jaws: The Revenge

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

Favoritest Movies of 1988

So, I was working on this list a few days ago, and looking up a movie I've always enjoyed  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, to honestly put it, it's been a few years since I've seen it, and I forgot who played the title role.  He was familiar, on the tip of my tongue, and in something else... but I couldn't summon the memory.  Nothing makes the brain more feeble or just plain lazy than Googling something rather than forcing the brain to actually recall the information.  Why think?  Wikipedia is right there in the search bar.  Oh, of course, John Neville was Baron Munchausen!  Well, I just couldn't put the face to name since he was wearing that prosthetic nose, and all that make-up... and now this morning, John Neville has just passed away.  So, to John Neville, the world wasn't tired of you.

1. Akira
2. Gandahar (Light Years)
3. U2: Rattle and Hum
4. Die Hard
5. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
6. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
7. Willow
8. Beetlejuice
9. Short Circuit 2
10. Working Girl
11. Without a Clue
12. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
13. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
14. They Live
15. Rain Man
16. Dangerous Liaisons
17. My Neighbor Totoro
18. Grave of the Fireflies
19. Crocodile Dundee II
20. Alien Nation
21. Earth Girls Are Easy
22. Young Guns
23. Twins
24. A Fish Called Wanda
25. Biloxi Blues
26. The Land Before Time
27. The Dead Pool
28. Red Heat
29. Feds
30. Scrooged
31. The Blob
32. My Stepmother Is an Alien
33. Vibes
34. Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
35. High Spirits
36. The Big Blue
37. Coming to America
38. Big
39. Gorillas in the Mist
40. Caddyshack II
41. Bull Durham
42. Taffin
43. She's Having a Baby
44. The Presidio
45. Eight Men Out
46. The Accidental Tourist
47. Action Jackson
48. Stand and Deliver
49. Oliver & Company
50. Big Top Pee-wee
51. Married to the Mob
52. Young Einstein
53. D.O.A.
54. Tequila Sunrise
55. The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking
56. Child's Play
57. Iron Eagle II
58. The Bear
59. The Last Temptation of Christ
60. The Great Outdoors
61. Cocktail
62. 18 Again!
63. Midnight Run
64. Mystic Pizza
65. Bird
66. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
67. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
68. License to Drive
69. Bat*21
70. Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach
71. Rambo III
72. Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw
73. Bloodsport
74. Cocoon: The Return
75. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
76. Mac and Me
77. Fright Night Part 2
78. Funny Farm
79. Bright Lights, Big City
80. Big Business
81. Clean and Sober
82. Frantic
83. Mississippi Burning
84. Buster
85. Ernest Saves Christmas
86. Cop
87. Punchline
88. Hot to Trot

John Neville 1925 - 2011

Favoritest Movies of 1989

 Some years last months, 1989 was almost a decade by itself.  The last few months of Junior High took forever, but ended with our group of friends back then all going to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!  Which is just about the happiest memory I can recount about a group of friends that, hanging out with any of them 1 on 1, was awesome, but social groups larger than 4 with only one gender represented tend to fall apart.  Look at Voltron; 5 guys, forget it.  4 dudes and a chick, okay.  Single gender rock bands with more than four members? There were 5 of us, and 40% of the group was named Mike, and everyone in the country had a Batman shirt.

So let me present the Perfect 1989 movie:

Little Kill & The Dead Dream... V Part II

It'd star Kevin Costner as a Viet Nam vet, unjustly sent to prison where he died.  But now he's back! And partnered with a dog!  And Is going to an underwater research facility where all the excitement will happen!  Oh the quirky researchers in the underwater lab; Dan Aykroyd, and Keanu Reeves.  Tom Hanks voices the Dogs thoughts. 

Which, if you saw most of the movies on this list, is the movie that would form in your brain... as for the real movies of 1989;

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2. Henry V
3. The Abyss
4. Back to the Future Part II
5. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
6. Batman
7. Field of Dreams
8. Lethal Weapon 2
9. Fat Man and Little Boy
10. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
11. Kiki's Delivery Service
12. Major League
13. The Little Mermaid
14. Godzilla vs. Biollante
15. Arena
16. Always
17. The War of the Roses
18. UHF
19. The Fly II
20. Black Rain
21. Ghostbusters II
22. Glory
23. Road House
24. Tango & Cash
25. Babar: The Movie
26. Licence to Kill
27. Heathers
28. When Harry Met Sally...
29. Weekend at Bernie's
30. The Karate Kid, Part III
31. The Experts
32. Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
33. Great Balls of Fire!
34. Dead Poets Society
35. Chances Are
36. Hard to Kill
37. The Dream Team
38. She's Out of Control
39. Look Who's Talking
40. Driving Miss Daisy
41. Gross Anatomy
42. Say Anything...
43. Leviathan
44. Dream a Little Dream
45. Lean on Me
46. Cyborg
47. Parenthood
48. Turner & Hooch
49. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
50. Skin Deep
51. Troop Beverly Hills
52. Blaze
53. Her Alibi
54. The 'Burbs
55. The Fabulous Baker Boys
56. Dead Calm
57. Best of the Best
58. Uncle Buck
59. How to Get Ahead in Advertising
60. K-9
61. Pink Cadillac
62. The Wizard
63. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
64. The Punisher
65. Do the Right Thing
66. Sex, lies, and videotape
67. Steel Magnolias
68. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
69. Night Game
70. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
71. Pet Sematary
72. Roger & Me
73. Worth Winning
74. All Dogs Go To Heaven
75. Deepstar Six
76. Kickboxer
77. Three Fugitives
78. Fletch Lives
79. Red Scorpion
80. Dead Bang
81. Lock Up
82. An Innocent Man
83. Sea of Love
84. Born on the Fourth of July
85. Casualties of War
86. The January Man

Favoritest 50 Movies of the '90's!!!

They signed their names.  When I sorted the numbers in Excel, I expected either Jurassic Park, or Phantom Menace, Hunt for Red October, or Galaxy Quest to grab the top spot.  But instead of the dawn of CG's dominance in effects or the return of Star Wars, a goodbye took the top score out of the most like 180 movies of a decade.  Although, from viewing one, I can't think of a bad thought I've ever had about this movie, maybe I'm just whitewashing my memory to justify the result.

• Jurassic Park... (What, could have had the aviary? please self, you're a whore for Jurassic Park!)  
• Contact? Yes, The beach and the dad are a letdown to my inner 5 year old who wants to see aliens...
• The American President... Okay, no complaints there either, although for awhile I think I enjoyed it more in (impending blasphamy... 3, 2, 1...) in Pan & Scan!!  But that just shows how much my father watched the VHS of it [ A: Daily ;) ].  There were some times he'd rewind it, and play it again.
• Episode I... No!  I won't say one bad thing about Star Wars episode I.  Only because I remember a time when there was more negative speech about that movie on the internet than porn, and The Matrix was the next big thing.  But, I think I found forgiveness on this decade round for The Matrix.

1. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 
2. Jurassic Park 
3. Contact 
4. The American President 
5. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 
6. Starship Troopers 
7. The Lion King 
8. Titanic 
9. The Hunt for Red October 
10. Galaxy Quest 
11. Aladdin 
12. Stargate 
13. Star Trek: First Contact 
14. Hook 
15. The Lost World: Jurassic Park 
16. Mulan 
17. Army of Darkness 
18. Beauty and the Beast
19. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
20. Independence Day 
21. The Thomas Crown Affair
22. Mallrats 
23. The Fifth Element 
24. The Rock 
25. Bicentennial Man 
26. Office Space 
27. The Matrix 
28. Pretty Woman 
29. Clerks 
30. The Mummy 
31. True Lies 
32. A Few Good Men 
33. Armageddon 
34. Shakespeare in Love 
35. Schindler's List 
36. Maverick 
37. Dave 
38. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
39. Total Recall
40. Star Trek Generations 
41. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me 
42. Pulp Fiction 
43. Basic Instinct 
44. Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh) 
45. Terminator 2: Judgment Day 
46. The Cutting Edge 
47. Léon 
48. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 
49. Princess Mononoke 
50. Tomorrow Never Dies

And I still don't have a cutoff for the ones that go to the "All Time" Round... although the 80th percentile is looking good.

Favoritest Movies of 1990

1990 was around when my mother left.  I don't remember when that was exactly, which seems odd because in the type of movies that take place in the only world the isipid Chelsea Handler can understand, the date of some major family trauma is etched in stone and Charlton Heston comes down from the higher echelon of your psyche with a cheap plastic cup bearing the date of the one, one offending day and a copy of the childhood home game.

Of course, when I watch movies that take plae in the only world palpable to Chelsea, I tend to think they're ridiculous fantasies because of all the concessions, contrivances, conveniences, and coincidences.  I don't remember the date my mother left, but heck it was the second time she did.  The first time being in fourth grade.  I had enough going on with starting High School, which is when she promised she would leave after she had come back the first time back in fourth grade...  



The benefit to my mother's abandonment of my father and I, aside from;

We went two summers in a row... Divorce is screwed up.

The side benefits were all the other overtures of bonding and distraction my father engaged in.  Star Trek Conventions; every one within driving distance.  The local sci-fi convention called Archon, renting movies on a weekly or better basis, going to the movies would become more and more regular until being a weekly habit as well, including going to the movies on Christmas, the first of which was Godfather Part III.  We were looking forward to it for months!  We had a Godfather movie marathon the week prior... (It's number 62, out of 109)

Trivial side note:  Back then, I was saving the ads for movies from Entertainment Weekly.  Full page movie ads were, the movie poster.  Also back then, my father and I kept a list of movies we saw together on the front of the refrigerator, and would rank them at the end of the year.
 
Well, this was the last list of the '90's, 181 movies made it into the fave of the decade round; that's 16,290 matchups, of which this lot in blue below me is responsible for 3087 of, or 19%.  So, I'll get to that...

1. The Hunt for Red October
2. Pretty Woman
3. Dances with Wolves
4. Back to the Future Part III
5. Pump Up the Volume
6. Total Recall
7. Spaced Invaders
8. By Dawn's Early Light
9. Predator 2
10. Memphis Belle
11. Frankenstein Unbound
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
13. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
14. RoboCop 2
15. DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
16. Robot Jox
17. Die Hard 2
18. Treasure Island
19. Edward Scissorhands
20. White Hunter, Black Heart
21. La Femme Nikita
22. Dick Tracy
23. Ghost
24. Tremors
25. The Rescuers Down Under
26. A Dangerous Man: Lawrence after Arabia
27. Quigley Down Under
28. Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
29. Marked for Death
30. Darkman
31. Men at Work
32. Young Guns II
33. Reversal of Fortune
34. Navy SEALs
35. Dreams
36. Narrow Margin
37. Hard to Kill
38. Kindergarten Cop
39. Vincent & Theo
40. Bird on a Wire
41. Jetsons: The Movie
42. The Bonfire of the Vanities
43. Hamlet
44. Quick Change
45. I Come in Peace
46. Postcards from the Edge
47. Days of Thunder
48. I Love You to Death
49. Joe Versus the Volcano
50. The Rookie
51. Captain America
52. The Guyver
53. My Blue Heaven
54. Air America
55. Taking Care of Business
56. Presumed Innocent
57. Short Time
58. Nuns on the Run
59. Repossessed
60. Blind Fury
61. Nightbreed
62. The Godfather Part III
63. Home Alone
64. Internal Affairs
65. Mr. Destiny
66. Green Card
67. The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter
68. Loose Cannons
69. Pacific Heights
70. Arachnophobia
71. Fire Birds
72. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
73. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
74. Goodfellas
75. Rocky V
76. The Freshman
77. Ju Dou
78. Miller's Crossing
79. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
80. The Russia House
81. Awakenings
82. Three Men and a Little Lady
83. Another 48 Hrs.
84. Look Who's Talking Too
85. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
86. Crash and Burn
87. Misery
88. Cyrano de Bergerac
89. Flatliners
90. Mermaids
91. Lord of the Flies
92. Cadillac Man
93. Child's Play 2
94. Henry & June
95. The Two Jakes
96. Blue Steel
97. The Krays
98. Jacob's Ladder
99. Stanley & Iris
100. Wild at Heart
101. Wild Orchid
102. The Witches
103. Miami Blues
104. Revenge
105. White Palace
106. Stella
107. King of New York
108. Problem Child
109. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

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