Top 100 Favorite Movies (90-81)
I know it’s the cool thing to hate on Peter Jackson and his films right now *gasp* he hasn’t made movies that are as good as some of the best movies ever made! Shock and awe! Every creative person will tell you that striking gold like that is not easy, especially in film when you have so many moving parts.
With that said, I am completely comfortable saying that I am a pretty big fan of Peter Jackson and his films. His sensibilities as a filmmaker are exactly what I’m looking for. I’m not blind to his faults, The Hobbit movies certainly don’t match the quality of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but how many movies made since 2003 have?
Absolutely love King Kong, I loved spending time at Skull Island and seeing all the creatures on the island. I loved the man eating worm things and how disturbing that scene was and that’s what I mean when I say that I love Peter Jackson’s sensibilities, he can go from heart pounding action, to laugh out loud funny, to making you squirm in your seat in a matter of minutes.
I loved seeing all the dinos and how they would have evolved and seeing different takes on dinos than Jurassic Park, which is the design most movies steal from. The V-Rex in particular are awesome and dat fight between the V-Rexes and Kong is some of the most entertaining cinema I can think of.
The movie also has an amazing heart, the relationship between Ann Darrow and Kong is so touching, pulled off amazingly well by both Naomi Watts and Andy Serkis. Naomi Watts is one of my favorite actresses and Andy Serkis is probably at this point, between Kong, Gollum and Caesar, Top 5 favorite actors. It’s criminal that he hasn’t won some kind of award and Hollywood is behind the times in not considering his roles performances. The same argument could be made, not to give any performer who wears makeup an award, because makeup enhances an actors’ performance, the same way motion capture does.
I’m ranting, but I’m very passionate about this movie. It’s a little bloated in places, you could trim a little fat here and there. The Hayes/Jimmy relationship, while performed well, really goes nowhere, neither character is of real consequence to the plot. That’s probably the one major thing I would cut, everyone else is fun, Jack Black is slightly distracting, but it’s more to do with who he is than his performance, which is solid. Adrien Brody is a lot of fun too, in a pretty thankless role that gets outshined by two powerhouse performances from the two real leads. Great movie though, one that I can watch over and over!
Favorite performance: Andy Serkis
Love Goodfellas! Look, if you know me, you’ll know I’ve said this hundreds of times, but I appreciate what The Godfather movies are to cinema. I think they’re great, some of the best acting around, with some great direction, they’re films that pushed the medium forward in a way it had not been pushed before, I get that, they’re amazing movies. They’re not all that entertaining to me though, so maybe I’m completely discounting this and whoever is reading this right now will stop reading it, since I’ve “bashed” The Godfather movies and praised Peter Jackson, but like I said at the beginning, this is not a list of the best movies of all time. This is a list of my favorite movies.
Goodfellas, I would watch a hundred times to one viewing of The Godfather. I never get tired of it, I think the performances are pretty close to being equal to The Godfather. There goes the rest of the people reading this. But seriously, Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci are never better in their careers than they are here and they’re both great. Not to mention a little known actor, Robert De Niro, oh yeah, same guy from The Godfather Part II and he’s just as good here! You have a great supporting cast with Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino…the list goes on and on. I love Goodfellas and I think Martin Scorsese can do no wrong with his films. He’ll have moments of missteps at worst, like Gangs of New York is not a perfect movie, next to who she’s acting against Cameron Diaz is way out of her realm, but it’s still a very entertaining, highly watchable movie.
More ranting, but you can tell how passionate I am about these films, Goodfellas is incredible, if it’s on TV, I’m sitting down and watching it and there is not a lot of movies I would say that about.
Favorite performance: Joe Pesci
I love Wes Craven’s films. I think? I don’t know, man, compared to the previous two filmmakers, Craven is really hit and miss. Unfortunately, it’s been quite some time since he’s had a hit. Scream 4 was okay, watchable at best. The first Scream? So amazing. I remember my parents, for some reason, really did not want me to see Scream. So I did what every teenager does and went over to a friends’ house to watch it. Again, I’m not sure why their reaction, there is sex and violence in the movie, but compared to a lot of horror films, it’s tame. There is no nudity, all sex is implied and the violence is pretty limited, because all the killer has is a knife.
It gets a little bit more creative than that, but compared to a lot of films in the genre, Scream is tame. And that’s what makes it great! Scream didn’t need any of that, it has some of the best characters in horror films to this day. The film is funny, the way it completely dissects the horror genre is amazing, while at the same time playing within the tropes of the genre. It’s tense and a little spooky, until the end of the movie, you’re unsure who or what the killer is.
And it’s well acted! Which is not something you can say very often in the horror genre. Maybe a single decent performance here and there, but most of the time nothing to write home about. I’m sitting here trying to think of a bad performance from the main characters and I just can’t think of one. Such a fun, amazing movie, I wish more horror movies were this smart.
Favorite performance: Matthew Lillard
To me, this is the crowning achievement of Disney Animation while Walt Disney himself was alive. It’s an absolutely beautifully animated movie that holds up way better animation wise than a lot of movies that followed it. Seriously, go look at a screen shot of this movie on google image search and try to find one that is not well detailed. It’s so good that a certain sequel to a blockbuster movie that is coming out next year referenced this movie a ton, so a movie from 2015 is referencing a 75 year old movie at that point. Think about that, that’s incredible. Most movies want you to forget other movies exist.
One thing Walt Disney did, that animation missed until John Lasseter showed up and the rest of the Pixar guys (and Chris Sanders) is that you have to have 3 things to make a successful animated movie: great story, great characters and a lot of heart. Pinocchio has all 3 of those things in spades, seriously, who doesn’t love Jiminy Cricket? He was a minor character in the book and now he’s the voice that thousands of people hear every night during the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. That’s amazing. From a 74 year old movie. Wow.
Favorite performance: Cliff Edwards
86. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
I definitely need to see this again, I’m comfortable with this movie being on this list if for nothing else because of how amazing the action in the movie is. The scene at the beginning where Cap and his crew are infiltrating the ship, so reminded me of one of my favorite video games, Metal Gear Solid 2, that from that point of the movie I was hooked and the action just got better from there.
Aside from the Cap and Black Widow relationship in this movie, I like the character stuff in The First Avenger far more, but the third act in The First Avenger just doesn’t hold up that well in comparison to the first two acts and that’s where Winter Soldier wins (and not to say the character stuff here is bad, it’s just not the focus). I mean, c’mon guys, you have to hand it to Marvel, this year they made a Captain America movie, who twenty years ago was a third rate super hero, that made more money than a Spider-Man movie, which is supposed to be their flagship character. That’s incredible and they did it because they made an awesome action film.
Favorite performance: Sebastian Stan
An absolutely gorgeous film that has no right to be as good as it is. Seriously, look at its brethren. Every other movie that is based off a video game is awful. Sure, some are fun and watchable, but they’re not good movies. I think Silent Hill is ¾ths of a pretty great movie. Visually, the movie is gorgeous. From what I understand, Christophe Gans wanted to follow the games as closely as possible. And visually he nailed the look and added something that should have been there the entire time, the visual change between normal Silent Hill and the otherworld version of Silent Hill, that transformation is incredible.
I’m not one of those Silent Hill fans that only loves what Team Silent did, though, trust me I really love their work, but I don’t think adaptations have to match the source material 1:1, so things like Pyramid Head being in this movie do not bother me at all. He’s an iconic character and I thought they did a good job of making him fit into the lore of the first Silent Hill game.
I don’t know that we’ll ever get another video game movie that is this good, I mean it’s been eight years since this came out and we have yet to get another. The ending doesn’t hold up so well, I think it’s satisfying enough the first time you watch it, but after maybe not so much. Just a really entertaining movie and out of Christophe Gan’s work, it’s the one that holds up the best for me! And hey, this has to be one of the few movies that Sean Bean doesn’t die in!
Favorite performance: Jodelle Ferland
84. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
The same way Dumb and Dumber is a quintessential 90’s movie to me, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a quintessential 80’s movie to me. It captures the feel of that decade perfectly, while not dating itself. The film is still really entertaining, mainly because of real fun performances from Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck, two absolutely hilarious performances. This is another one of those movies where If it comes on while I’m watching TV, I’m watching the whole thing, no matter how many times I see it, it never gets old.
Favorite performance: Matthew Broderick
83. Minority Report (2002)
Really interesting movie, because this came at the point when Tom Cruise was still a mega star. Now he’s just a normal star, that has hits and misses, same as every other actor does. Not back then, everything was a huge hit and a Tom Cruise movie was an event you did not want to miss. A great thing about the movie is Spielberg avoids a lot of the usual tropes he uses and as such, the film feels really fresh and unique. I’ll say the plot holds up probably as the best thing for me here, the performances are fine, though I don’t think any one performance is amazing. The action is good, has brief moments of greatness, but action direction isn’t really what you go to a Spielberg movie for. The whole package is great though, such a watchable movie, with everything firing on all cylinders.
Favorite performance: Samantha Morton
I’ve already kind of tipped my hand on this one, but I’m disappointed in John Carpenter’s output after the 80’s. His films are never terrible, though they certainly dip their toes in that pool once in a while, they’re watchable enough. But they’re not memorable at all after the 90’s. I did an (unfinished) series of blogs where I was watching and dissecting every John Carpenter movie and trying to paint an overall picture of his career and it gets depressing. But, I can talk about this more with another film on this list.
Halloween is great. How great is it, you ask? So great that nearly every slasher movie after, so badly wanted to be it and failed miserably. It’s not perfect, the acting is pretty bad around the board, but considering everything else the movie gets right, on pure atmosphere alone, this movie is great.
I love the Halloween series, I’m a major apologist for many of the bad movies in the series (nope to the Rob Zombie versions though, not for me) but this is by far my favorite of the Michael Myer’s. He’s such a mysterious, fascinating and deadly character here. But there’s dat one scene, the scene where he randomly shows up with a sheet covering his body and glasses where the eye holes are, where he’s playing with his victim. And dat other scene, where he tilts his head after pinning a guy to a wall with his butcher knife. There’s a curiosity in what he’s doing, almost like (and this is the one nod I’ll give Zombie) a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. It’s terrifying and it’s moments like those the series never gets right again. Amazing, amazing movie!
Favorite performance: Nick Castle
81. Kill Bill vol. 1 (2003)
Just like Peter Jackson, I make no apologies for loving Quentin Taratino’s movies. I think that’s probably universally more acceptable than my thoughts on Peter Jackson, however. Tarantino has not made a bad movie, I love every scene in Django with Leo, he’s incredible and that’s my favorite performance of his next to Wolf of Wall Street. Death Proof (which is so much better than Planet Terror it kind of sucks they’re both in the same film) is incredible and almost made this list. Jackie Brown is unsurprising, but insanely watchable.
Kill Bill vol. 2 is a slow burn after the action of the first movie, but really well acted and the payoff with Bill is absolutely worth the wait. I prefer vol. 1, because of the action. Everything from when the moment the Bride arrives in Tokyo is incredible. The Crazy 88 fight is absolutely insane and the homages to other kung fu movies in this movie, kind of melts my movie loving heart and that’s one of the things I love about Tarantino’s work, you can tell he loves film and his enthusiasm for it reflects on the screen.
I love the above scene though, the showdown with O-Ren, the sadness that this all has to happen and the payoff is well worth it. Such an amazing film, with one of the best cliffhanger endings ever!
Favorite performance: Uma Thurman
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