That top 10 games thread made me wanna do a top 10 movies thread, so here it is. Now is the time to go through the pain of pitting your favorite movies of all time against each other in a battle for hierarchy, then post the list for others to compare to their own and mock you for having pleb tier movie preferences. Use whatever criteria you want, obviously, but it's probably more fun if you actually explain your choices instead of just throwing a list up there.
Here's my own list, which was made through a few hours of agonizing consideration. My own criteria in general is just ranking by overall feelings about the movies instead of getting nitpicky about details, but I do explain specific stuff for why I like each one anyway.
10. American Psycho
9. Dogma
8. The Truman Show
7. Gangs of New York
6. The Shawshank Redemption
5. The Usual Suspects
4. Pulp Fiction
3. American Beauty
2. The Silence of the Lambs
1. American History X
This was actually the easiest choice for me to make on this list, because long ago it became the movie that I judge all other movies against to decide how good they are, and nothing has topped it (durr, otherwise something else would be in my #1 spot). Whenever people ask for a movie suggestion it is my go-to suggestion every single time, because it's just that good. I can watch it multiple times in one day and not grow bored of it, and that is something no other movie has ever accomplished for me. It's the story of a high school student, Danny, who's following his older brother Derek's footsteps into becoming a neo-Nazi. Said brother went to jail for a few years, and the story starts off showing the event that sent him there: a few black guys came and broke into his car so he went out there with a pistol (in just his boxers, showing off his snazzy swastika chest tattoo), which ended pretty much how you'd expect. Then it moves to a present day (three years later, the day after the older brother's release from prison) scene of Danny being brought to the principal's office for writing a paper on Mein Kampf and saying Hitler was a civil rights leader. Rather than expelling him or doing any other standard punishment, the principal decides to take over his history teaching and assigns him to write a paper about his brother and what led him to do the things he did that caused him to go to prison. From there it tells that story, with Danny doing some narration that is the paper he's writing, a mix of current day happenings and stuff in the past (shown in black and white to differentiate it) to explain everything. Explaining any more of the plot would probably ruin stuff, so that's the end of that.
Everything about American History X, from the acting to the cinematography, is just fucking phenomenal. Edward Norton is probably my favorite actor, and his role in this movie is in my opinion the best he's ever done, but rather than being the obvious and outstanding best actor in the movie he just happens to be the best of an amazing cast despite none of the other actors being those I would call A-list actors; Edward Furlong (probably best known for being John Connor in Terminator 2) plays the main character and does a damned good job of it, Avery Brooks plays the school principal dude who's trying to keep this student from becoming a neo-Nazi, and I'll just stop listing them there because stopping with the kinda main 3 character in the movie instead of listing them all is a good idea, but the rest are also great. A huge part of what makes the movie so good is that the characters all feel like real people, for which the script writing probably deserves a lot of credit. I normally don't take a ton of notice of cinematography and sound usage in a movie, but both of those thing caught my notice in American History X and they're damned good. The ending is one of those things that I don't want to spoil, but urgh it's so good it hurts. The only sorta flaw I can think of with the movie is one secondary character whose acting only hits a maybe 8.5 out of 10 performance while the rest of the cast is giving 9.5 or 10 level shit, and an 8.5 is still good shit. I could fanboy about this movie for hours, and while that's gross I really can't blame myself because seriously everyone should watch this if they haven't.
Requiem for a Dream - Honestly I was surprised I found 10 movies I liked more than this one. It's all about various addictions the characters have and how they run and often ruin their lives, and it pulls some of that viewer mind-fuckery that I so enjoy. The music in the movie is one of the high points, though the actors and such are also really good.
Memento - Like the above, this just barely didn't make the cut. It's a psychological thriller about a guy who has no short term memory anymore after an accident of some kind, and it's pretty damn good. Nothing spectacular in the way of acting stuff, but the great plot and all the twists and turns it takes more than make up for that.
A Clockwork Orange - Some of you may be seeing a theme with my top ten and honorable mentions by now. I like movies that try to screw with the viewer's mind and play with all sorts of complex themes. A Clockwork Orange is all about that, plus plenty of dark humor, and I enjoy it a lot.
Fight Club - Another one of those movies that would easily make a slightly larger list. It's a great movie, though greatly overhyped by a lot of people who act like it's the messiah of movies because of the anarchist stuff and the ending. Still definitely worth watching if you haven't seen though, if only because it stars Edward Norton and he's great.
Red Dragon - Speaking of Edward Norton being great, here's another movie he stars in. It's a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, and while it's a great movie it's just not quite as great as its predecessor. I blame it on the serial killer dude called The Tooth Fairy being not as good as Buffalo Bill; Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is still great, and I like Edward Norton as the lead better than Jodie Foster's character, but the other dude doesn't pull his weight. Still good enough that it might make a top 15 list, so I'm not really shitting on this movie or anything.
Super Troopers - My favorite outright goofy comedy movie. It's dumb as fuck, but it's so fun. Used to call it just my favorite straight up comedy movie, but then while making this list I learned Dogma was billed as just a comedy so I guess that's inaccurate, heh.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of other movies I wanted to include here because my power went out in the middle of writing this so I lost my notepad with a larger list on it, but whatever, might add some later.
Here's my own list, which was made through a few hours of agonizing consideration. My own criteria in general is just ranking by overall feelings about the movies instead of getting nitpicky about details, but I do explain specific stuff for why I like each one anyway.
10. American Psycho
I quite enjoy movies that fuck with the viewer, and American Psycho does it well. I also have a dark sense of humor, and that's another thing this movie provides. The whole concept is pretty great, and Christian Bale plays the joyfully insane main character very well. There's not a lot more I can say about it without spoiling some of the great shit in the movie though, so I'll just stop here.
9. Dogma
Dogma is one of those rare movies that is full of comedy but manages to also have a good plot going on that isn't driven by wacky hijinks. Honestly I didn't even realize that it was billed as a straight up comedy, because the stuff I remember most about it are the less overtly humorous bits, though thinking about it again I guess it really was a comedy movie at its core. The acting is pretty stellar throughout, and it is damned funny, which is probably a good thing since it's a comedy. Oh, and it's not afraid to offend people (tons of shit given to Christians, for instance), and I enjoy that a lot.
8. The Truman Show
The Truman Show is one of the few movies that makes me actually root wholly for the protagonist. Usually I'm the kinda guy who loves to see bag guys win and protagonists get their shit wrecked, but not here. This was the movie that first made me (and probably lots of other people) realize Jim Carrey could actually do serious acting, and damn did he do it well. The concept of the movie (a guy has his whole life filmed without knowing it, it's basically a whole TV channel in and of itself, and everyone around him are actors) is just fantastic as well. The Truman Show came out about a year before The Matrix, and it had people pondering the same sort of "omg what if my whole life is a lie???" sort of thing. It's a damned good movie overall, thus the place here on the list.
7. Gangs of New York
So, this movie has a fair amount of problems that are quite reasonable to point out. It's nowhere near a perfect movie. The acting is generally good, I love the concept, the sound work and music are good enough to actually be noteworthy (which is a rarity for me), and various other good things. However, the main reason why this movie is in my top ten instead of being an honorable mention is because of motherfucking Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher. As I implied above, and as many probably already know about me, I fucking love well-made villains. The actual scripting for the character is great, makes him a totally realistic villain with a real personality and actual motivations, and Daniel Day-Lewis's acting makes it fucking stellar.
6. The Shawshank Redemption
This is one of those movies that you frequently see on people's top movies list, often as the #1 spot, and it's really deserved. The script, the pacing, the acting, the cinematography, all of it is on point. I think the thing that stands out the most about The Shawshank Redemption is that all of the characters feel like real people, and that makes them so damned easy to relate with. I can't think of a single negative thing to say about this movie, and that's a huge part of why it's on the list. The only reason it's sitting here at #6 instead of higher is because I'm ranking movies by my overall feeling of the movie, and while everything is great there's really nothing that pops out as "OMFG THAT IS AMAZING," and in my mind those peaks of hype shit count for a lot. Basically for Shawshank Redemption when I think about watching it again right now it's something like "alright, it's good, let's do it," whereas those that made the top 5 elicit more of a "fuck yeah I'm gonna watch it!" response.
5. The Usual Suspects
When I first watched this movie I went into it expecting it to be like a 7/10 film at best. I'm not typically into movies about heists and such, but this one worked for me. I really enjoyed the way the story was told largely through the main character's recollections and what he tells the police, rather than going in a linear fashion. Speaking of the main character, Kevin Spacey is pretty fucking great, plays the role very well. There's quite a bit of stuff I like about this movie that I can't explain without getting into spoilers for the ending, but I will say that it's one of the best endings I've ever seen in a movie, such that it's better than the endings of all the other movies on my top ten list aside from my #1 pick.
4. Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction has a lot of shit I enjoy. It fucks with the viewer, it has a dark sense of humor, and it has a very grey sense of morality about it. Only maybe one major character in the movie is clearly and blatantly just a villain, and only one character of any consequence doesn't have any bad parts shown, but almost everyone else has mixed parts good and evil, and I like that a lot. Non-linear storytelling is good shit, and that's one of the main features of Pulp Fiction. All the actors do a damned good job (aside from maybe Tarantino in his cameo). It's also got some pretty fucking great writing, with a lot of great stretches of dialogue and plenty of memorable lines, and that's always a good thing. I can see why plenty of people don't like this movie, since it's got a lot of weird things going on, but it works for me and I love it.
3. American Beauty
This movie, man... Basically it's a story about a boring average guy (played marvelously by Kevin Spacey, who has become one of my favorite actors in recent years) who has a huge midlife crisis and decides to just live his life the way he wants to. It's a satire of the whole concept of what it means to be successful and happy in middle class America, and it pulls that angle off very well. It's also the movie that made me cringe the most out of any film I've ever watched, because some of the shit the main character does early on in the movie is just painfully embarrassing, yet it fits the character so well that it's perfectly fine. Other than that it's the same story as a lot of other entries on my list, great cast and script and such, but I'm feeling like a broken record on that front. It's good enough that for a while I ranked it equal with my #1 pick, but then I rewatched it and my #2 pick again after having watched American Beauty for the first time about half a year ago so it got shunted down to the bronze medal position.
2. The Silence of the Lambs
So y'know how I've said a couple places in this list that I love well done villains? Silence of the Lambs has two of them, Buffalo Bill (played by Ted Levine) and fucking Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). In concept, history, motivation, and acting, both of them are fantastic. Then there's main character Clarice played by Jodie Foster, and while she's less of an enthralling character for me than the baddies she is still a good character and she's acted rather nicely. Those three characters are what makes the movie so damned good. All the other stuff (cinematography, sound, pacing, etc.) are also good, but it's the trinity of well written and acted characters that make it what it is.
1. American History X
This was actually the easiest choice for me to make on this list, because long ago it became the movie that I judge all other movies against to decide how good they are, and nothing has topped it (durr, otherwise something else would be in my #1 spot). Whenever people ask for a movie suggestion it is my go-to suggestion every single time, because it's just that good. I can watch it multiple times in one day and not grow bored of it, and that is something no other movie has ever accomplished for me. It's the story of a high school student, Danny, who's following his older brother Derek's footsteps into becoming a neo-Nazi. Said brother went to jail for a few years, and the story starts off showing the event that sent him there: a few black guys came and broke into his car so he went out there with a pistol (in just his boxers, showing off his snazzy swastika chest tattoo), which ended pretty much how you'd expect. Then it moves to a present day (three years later, the day after the older brother's release from prison) scene of Danny being brought to the principal's office for writing a paper on Mein Kampf and saying Hitler was a civil rights leader. Rather than expelling him or doing any other standard punishment, the principal decides to take over his history teaching and assigns him to write a paper about his brother and what led him to do the things he did that caused him to go to prison. From there it tells that story, with Danny doing some narration that is the paper he's writing, a mix of current day happenings and stuff in the past (shown in black and white to differentiate it) to explain everything. Explaining any more of the plot would probably ruin stuff, so that's the end of that.
Everything about American History X, from the acting to the cinematography, is just fucking phenomenal. Edward Norton is probably my favorite actor, and his role in this movie is in my opinion the best he's ever done, but rather than being the obvious and outstanding best actor in the movie he just happens to be the best of an amazing cast despite none of the other actors being those I would call A-list actors; Edward Furlong (probably best known for being John Connor in Terminator 2) plays the main character and does a damned good job of it, Avery Brooks plays the school principal dude who's trying to keep this student from becoming a neo-Nazi, and I'll just stop listing them there because stopping with the kinda main 3 character in the movie instead of listing them all is a good idea, but the rest are also great. A huge part of what makes the movie so good is that the characters all feel like real people, for which the script writing probably deserves a lot of credit. I normally don't take a ton of notice of cinematography and sound usage in a movie, but both of those thing caught my notice in American History X and they're damned good. The ending is one of those things that I don't want to spoil, but urgh it's so good it hurts. The only sorta flaw I can think of with the movie is one secondary character whose acting only hits a maybe 8.5 out of 10 performance while the rest of the cast is giving 9.5 or 10 level shit, and an 8.5 is still good shit. I could fanboy about this movie for hours, and while that's gross I really can't blame myself because seriously everyone should watch this if they haven't.
Requiem for a Dream - Honestly I was surprised I found 10 movies I liked more than this one. It's all about various addictions the characters have and how they run and often ruin their lives, and it pulls some of that viewer mind-fuckery that I so enjoy. The music in the movie is one of the high points, though the actors and such are also really good.
Memento - Like the above, this just barely didn't make the cut. It's a psychological thriller about a guy who has no short term memory anymore after an accident of some kind, and it's pretty damn good. Nothing spectacular in the way of acting stuff, but the great plot and all the twists and turns it takes more than make up for that.
A Clockwork Orange - Some of you may be seeing a theme with my top ten and honorable mentions by now. I like movies that try to screw with the viewer's mind and play with all sorts of complex themes. A Clockwork Orange is all about that, plus plenty of dark humor, and I enjoy it a lot.
Fight Club - Another one of those movies that would easily make a slightly larger list. It's a great movie, though greatly overhyped by a lot of people who act like it's the messiah of movies because of the anarchist stuff and the ending. Still definitely worth watching if you haven't seen though, if only because it stars Edward Norton and he's great.
Red Dragon - Speaking of Edward Norton being great, here's another movie he stars in. It's a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, and while it's a great movie it's just not quite as great as its predecessor. I blame it on the serial killer dude called The Tooth Fairy being not as good as Buffalo Bill; Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is still great, and I like Edward Norton as the lead better than Jodie Foster's character, but the other dude doesn't pull his weight. Still good enough that it might make a top 15 list, so I'm not really shitting on this movie or anything.
Super Troopers - My favorite outright goofy comedy movie. It's dumb as fuck, but it's so fun. Used to call it just my favorite straight up comedy movie, but then while making this list I learned Dogma was billed as just a comedy so I guess that's inaccurate, heh.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of other movies I wanted to include here because my power went out in the middle of writing this so I lost my notepad with a larger list on it, but whatever, might add some later.
