——My Top Twenty Favorite Movies of All Time——

“All Time” is a slight misnomer, since I made a similar list last year and it looks vastly different from this one. For shits and giggles, here is what my list looked like back on December 14, 2002.

1. Aliens
2. The French Connection
3. The Godfather Part 2
4. Rushmore
5. Casablanca
6. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
7. Rocky
8. LotRs: The Fellowship of the Ring
9. Seven Samurai
10. A Clockwork Orange
11. Punch-Drunk Love

OK, now it’s time for the real fun. Instead of “ten” movies, we’re working with twenty this year. Movies were chosen based on the following characteristics: the quality of the film overall, the influence it had on me, how much the movie speaks about my own tastes and how much I would enjoy watching the movie again. Throw all of that into a blender, have me apply numbers to my choices pretty quickly and impulsively, and you get my Top Twenty Favorite Movies of ALL TIME!

1. Aliens

OK, so far it does look like the last list. So sue me. While after picking Aliens as my number one the last time I couldn’t come up with any great reasons why it should be number one against all of the rest, I couldn’t really come up with any great reasons why it shouldn’t either, and I still feel the same way. No, it’s not the greatest movie on my list, but something about it hits me cerebrally in just the right way. The original Star Wars trilogy are the movies that got me into movies, but I think this is really the movie that made me want to make movies.

This movie has just about everything I could ever want in a movie. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s touching, it’s action packed, it has amazing special effects and a good story to boot. The Alien is the second single greatest creation in film (and I’m talking about the Aliens version, the one with the holes and bumps in its head. No smooth skull for me!). Wait, you say, what’s the first? The Alien Queen of course. What could be any cooler? It should be no surprise then that one of my favorite possessions of all time is my MacFarlane Alien Queen figure I got this year. So cool.

The story is structured fantastically. Instead of one Alien there are hundreds. The Colonial Marines come in to sweep them up, the biggest, baddest bad-asses in the universe, and they are almost wiped out to the man like they were children with pop guns. Ripley has to face her fear of the Aliens and the loss of her daughter. In comes Newt. Cute and yet worldly beyond her years, she is one of the best child actors period. In the end the fight isn’t between a bunch of guns and marines against the Aliens, but between one mom against another. Ripley isn’t going to lose Newt and the Queen isn’t going to let Ripley toast her brood. Thus one of the most magnificent cat fights of all time is put to film, with one of the best fake out endings of all time added on.

It’s my favorite military movie, my favorite horror movie, my favorite science fiction movie and my favorite drama all rolled into one. The amazing sound effects still give me chills. Everything about this movie gives me goosebumps, it’s so good. That’s why it is number one.

2. Kill Bill: Volume 1

This may change slightly if when Volume 2 comes out it sucks compared to the first, but I don’t really think that will be the case. But forgetting all of that, like Aliens, if I were going to make a movie it would look a lot like Kill Bill.

The way I think and create, I like to take a lot of different influences and mix them all together, as common theme just naturally commingle in my head. The same is definitely true of this movie. Quentin Tarantino took all of these pop-trash Grind House flicks and took the best parts out of each in order to make a truly remarkable revenge movie. The story itself is pretty sparse but there is so much thought put behind each look and action that you can actually get out of the movie all of the deep story that you want without being encumbered with it when it comes time to pull out the sword. Tarantino is playing off the genre conventions very deftly in a way that helps you fill in all of the gaps where you need to so that you can enjoy what is really a pretty straightforward action movie.

But beyond that, just the fact that it has all of my favorite genres wrapped in there–kung fu, samurai sword fights, anime, spaghetti Western and so much more–and manages to fit it all together convincingly makes it worthy of being a favorite movie of mine. Hell, the final battle is even so spectacular that you really don’t care that Bill wasn’t Killed.

3. Rear Window

A simple movie so complexly layered with different themes that on any and every level you could have a great time enjoying this film. It’s a movie all about watching, which when you go to a movie that’s just about all you are doing anyway, so that there becomes three different layers to the film. There is Jimmy Stewart watching his neighbors, Jimmy Stewart’s story, and then us watching Jimmy Stewart watch his neighbors. Stewart is a camera man and a person, thus he is the audience and the movie camera all in one. When the killer comes over to his apartment or when he grapples with Grace Kelly we feel just as helpless as Jimmy Stewart stuck in his wheelchair. They are incredibly tense moments because we immediately identify with Stewart and can do nothing to alter the outcome. We can only sit and watch.

What’s really great about this film though is the voyeuristic aspect of it. Hitchcock pretty much shoots the entire film from Stewart’s apartment, and each apartment seems to have its own story that is happening independent of Stewart. As the movie progresses you can actually see people lean forward to see what is going on in the other apartments, a point where art almost seamlessly imitates life. Would the scene really be any different if that was our apartment and it wasn’t just a movie?

4. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

John Wayne may be for many the quisessential cowboy; for me it’s Eastwood. And of course I wouldn’t give Westerns even a second glance still, if it weren’t for Sergio Leone. Watching this movie is like having a stick of dynamite go off in your lap. Leone uses every bold move in the book, and it looks magnificent. Only Leone could edit together a three minute long stand-off where nothing actually happens and have it be the most compelling thing you’ve ever seen. The visual language is just fantastic. Add to that some great use of sound (is there really any greater Western soundtrack than this one? Wah-wah-wah, Wah—wah-wah) and Eastwood’s magnificent Man with No Name (squint, look cool, shoot, repeat) and you have one of the most fun movies to watch ever.

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This movie for me is easily the greatest slasher flick ever made. Everything about it just feels so right. The recent remake makes the mistake of (claiming to be) showing you documentary footage at the beginning and end of the film; the original felt like a documentary from beginning to end. That’s what made it so creepy. The grainy 16mm and scratchy voice over at the beginning instead of feeling cheap only elevate the mood.

But where the movie really succeeds is in creating REAL terror. All of the great moments are completely unexpected, but not of the cheap “have the music screech and have a cat jump across the screen” variety. When the girl is trapped in the house at the end, there is nothing as creepy as having grandpa try (and fail) to brain you with a mallet. The final look on the heroine’s says it all. She’s been forever changed by her experiences in that house, and I think the audience is pretty much forever changed for having watched it.

6. Rushmore

I usually hate movies with annoying protagonists. Something about this movie is different though. Max isn’t just annoying, he’s a full fledged three-dimensional character who just happens to be annoying. Add to that a quirky screenplay and direction by Wes Anderson (the story becomes very theatrical to mirror Max’s main hobby, the theater, so much so that curtains actually rise and fall at parts), and the wonderful performance by Bill Murray (where was everyone when this came out that we only just noticed with brilliance with Lost in Translation?) and you have the makings of a fantastic personal movie.

7. The French Connection

What I like about this movie is how raw and appropriate the camera work is. The movie is pretty much one giant chase sequence, and the camera-work always has that chase sequence mentality to it. There is a real sense of immediacy there as the camera looks generally in the direction of Gene Hackman’s eyes, so that we are almost always in his perspective throughout the movie. It’s gritty and hardcore. Hackman isn’t your average policeman and he definitely doesn’t act like one either. And that car/train chase has to definitely be in the top five greatest chases ever put to film.

8. Man with a Movie Camera

Never has the art of montage been used to greater effect than in this film. A lot like Rear Window this is essentially a movie about voyeurism that lets you, the audience in on that fact. Most of the movie is shots of people working and playing, but it is then interspersed with shots of Vertov shooting or of his editor editing. There is a certain playfulness to the whole thing where Vertov will get a great shot and then show you how he got it, or edit a great sequence and then show you how one edits. He’ll slow the image down to a single still shot to have us focus on the subject and the medium at the same time. He cuts in shots of a projector showing his movie and an audience watching it. We have become part of the movie and we are asks eagerly to participate in it by making associations between say, a woman opening and closing her eyes and a window shutter opening and closing out the sun, and I think this movie is entirely unique in that regard.

9. Ninja Scroll

Watch this movie for the first time and you see a video game-like story with lots of action. Watch it again and the story stands out a little more, but still it’s all about the action. Watch it again after that and you suddenly start to realize how perfectly this anime is put together, how amazing it is that the director could do so much with so little. This is action sequence 101. Learn how to put together a thrilling action sequence all through editing so that you can get away with as much as possible while animating as little as possible to save time and money. Everything is done with a look or a color or a suggestion. All the important elements are there with a minimum of fluid animation. Live action directors could actually learn more than they think from this anime director.

Did I mention that the movie is also insanely fun?

10. The Godfather Part II

For a lot of people Part I is the preferred film, but for me II is tops. The movie feels more mature and confident than the original, and I think the choice to cut together Vito’s story of his rise with Michael’s story in the present without actually tying them together until the end is incredibly ballsy and brilliant. The parallels between father and son become incredibly poignant, and yet Michael becomes misguided and loses sight of what made his father such a great man, the ties of family. That the death of Fredo comes right before the scene that presumably happens some time before the first Godfather but after Vito’s rise where the family is all together and happy does a nice job subtly and yet precisely getting across the themes of the film. It’s all about association. And it all works. This movie just has a much larger emotional depth for me than Part I, and that’s why I love it.

11. 8 1/2

This is another really nice movie where the lines between the film and reality and fact and fiction blur into an entirely enjoyable piece of entertainment. As the audience we get to look in on a film that is both fictional and autobiographical, almost documentary like and then the most fantastical carnivalesque thing you can find. There is a joy and whimsy to it, like in the sequence where the director meets with the writer to talk about how their movie feels like a pale imitation of other art, and in the background we see a scene straight out of a popular painting. Fellini is grappling with the void between his personal life and his art, and only in the final scene does he come to terms with his conflicts in an amusing scene where he, as a little boy, directs characters from his film, his life, and his memories to march around in a parade. A great, fun movie to watch.

12. Once Upon a Time in the West

I wouldn’t be surprised if in the coming years this Leone film replaced The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as one of my all time top favorites. Everything is like TGTBATU and yet at an even grander scope. The shots are more exquisitely composed, the soundtrack more epic, the editing even more spectacular. Like the title suggests this movie has a more fairy tale quality of it, in that what we are really witnessing is a trumped up version of a film about how the West was won. Just amazing. I love it.

13. Seven Samurai

This movie has for me everything that makes/made Kurosawa a great filmmaker. There is the plot, taken straight out of a John Ford Western (and ultimately taken back and made into the Magnificent Seven), of seven wandering samurai and ronin choosing to protect a poor village against bandits not for the money (because there really is none) but for honor. There are the characters. Even though there are seven of them each one is given his own time and characteristics so that they all become unique and not just cardboard cut outs. And there is the editing. The final battle against the bandits is just brilliantly put together. Kurosawa easily works on multiple levels, moving us from the personal to the epic and back again with gentle ease. A great example of how to make a movie.

14. Punch-Drunk Love

What I really liked about this movie is how it put the emotional response over the cerebral. This movie as the title suggests is about punch-drunk love, that kind of love that hits you like a sledgehammer and defies rationality. The editing totally pulls together that feeling. The movie sweeps you along just like love, and then explodes suddenly and surprisingly at times just like Barry’s temper. P.T. Anderson purposefully keeps you on edge by keeping things tense, and yet throws in humor and the love story to keep you from going off your rocker. It’s an emotional powerhouse of unpredictability, and I love it.

15. The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Rather than try to consider each film on its own, it is better to look at all the films as a whole, since that’s really how J.R.R. Tolkien intended the books to be, and since all three films were shot at the same time there is really no reason to look at them separately. And on the whole this series is one of the greatest epic series of all time. It hits all of those high and low notes perfectly, easily alternating between the epic battle of RotK to the quite character study of Gollum in TTT. Borromir’s journey through FotR, although short, is almost epic in scope, first having a man succumb to the power of the Ring only to redeem himself by saving Merry and Pippin. And then of course there is the amazing triangle between Gollum, Frodo and Sam when trying to destroy the Ring in RotK, the only thing that could ever surpass the epic battle scenes in greatness. On every front this is a great movie, so good that Peter Jackson’s vision could please the hardcore geeks and the first time viewers alike.

16. Mulholland Drive

What a weird movie. Of all of the movies on my list, this is probably the one that stays the freshest on multiple viewings, if only because it’s harder than hell to figure out what it all means. That doesn’t mean we all don’t have our theories as to what it all means, nor does it mean that this isn’t an insanely addictive and enjoyable movie. What it does mean that this is one of those most fun rides you could have watching a movie, and hell, hot lesbian sex can’t really hurt a movie.

17. Apocalypse Now

No other movie really brings out the insanity of war like this movie, which is interesting because besides a few random scenes here and there it really isn’t a war movie. It’s all about a man’s descent into madness and the setting of the Vietnam War only helps to amplify that theme. Could any of us forget the phrase, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” though? I think not. An amazing film about the decent into madness.

18. The Apartment

This wasn’t originally going to be on the list, but I watched it again last night and just had to put it there. That a comedy could be so depressing is really a good show of the versatility and genius of Billy Wilder. This is the perfect kind of romance, silly at times but otherwise incredibly poignant. It’s such a great movie, tearing at the heartstrings while tickling the funny bone at the same time. That’s the way it all crumbles for Wilder, cookie wise, that is.

19. TIE: Shaolin and Wu Tang & The 5 Superfighters

I couldn’t really choose between my two favorite kung fu movies, so I just added them both. They both have amazing kung fu in them that spans multiple styles with ease. Both have great stories and lots of humor. And both end with the main characters joining together to defeat the bad guy. And hell, both are an insanely large amount of fun. If you love kung fu, these should be the first two places you stop.

20. Kiki’s Delivery Service

My favorite of Miyazaki’s films, this one feels the most personal and down to earth of all of his brilliant films. The story is incredibly simple (young witch leaves home with her talking cat to make a life for herself) and yet the emotions involved are surprisingly complex. I love movies that just drop you into a world and yet understate the epic nature of creating an entire world. The movie isn’t about the world, it’s about the person, and Kiki is such a personal, emotional film that you can’t help but love it.

Well, that’s it. Just in case you wanted to see the list with out all the dialog in between, here it is:

1. Aliens
2. Kill Bill: Volume 1
3. Rear Window
4. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
6. Rushmore
7. The French Connection
8. Man with a Movie Camera
9. Ninja Scroll
10. The Godfather, Part II
11. 8 1/2
12. Once Upon a Time in the West
13. Seven Samurai
14. Punch-Drunk Love
15. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
16. Mulholland Drive
17. Apocalypse Now
18. The Apartment
19. TIE: Shaolin and Wu Tang & The 5 Superfighters
20. Kiki’s Delivery Service