All Time Top Ten Movie List

The Brunette and I went to the flicks last night (for my younger readers, 'flicks' = cinema). The film was one of those that you enjoy at the time but immediately forget as soon as it's over. This is a bit sad for the film makers really. All those months of writing, acting, directing, lighting, editing, producing etc just to have a philistine like me damn it with faint praise. Such is life.

It got me thinking about my favourite movies. It must be the time of year. We're approaching the butt end of 2009 and most newspapers and magazines will soon be churning out their lists of the high and low points of the past twelve months. The best and worst of everything - movies, books, cars, music, blah blah.

It sounds like easy journalism and perhaps it is. Coming up with the top ten movies of all time is straightforward enough if you take gross earnings as your criterion, but what if it's based purely on personal choice?  What would my 'all time top ten' consist of? Well, there are numerous genres for a start. Is it practicable to put a Hollywood blockbuster action movie in the same list as a small independent docudrama? Or to juggle a light and fluffy romcom, a stygian horror gorefest and an historical war epic?

I can compile a list of ten movies that I love fairly quickly but would they be my all time favourites? They might be at the time of compilation but on another day I'd probably put together a totally different alternative list depending on my mood.

Should my list only contain critically acclaimed films? Surely you jest? As much as I love Mark Kermode our taste in cinema is like chalk and Leggo. Film critics often deride movies as being 'manipulative', in that they play with your emotions, fool you into thinking something is true when it isn't or try to convince you that something fantastical can actually happen. Like this is a bad thing? This is what cinema is all about for me. I suspend my disbelief at the door in the hope that I'm going to be pleasantly surprised, so 'manipulation' features in many of my favourite films.

Perhaps films that I remember as having had some sort of an effect on me are the ones that should be on the list. Even this isn't foolproof though. I remember having a little man-weep during Steel Magnolias (the bit where Sally Field berates God for taking her daughter, Julia Roberts, from her). Lovely movie but it wouldn't be in my top ten.

Maybe my list should only include films that I've seen a number of times and would watch many more times in the future. But where would this leave Thelma and Louise? I've only seen that once, during my 'courting of the Brunette' days. We loved every second of it and it inspired us to drive across several of the southern US states (though we drew the line at the plummeting into the canyon bit). I could buy the DVD and watch it til the cows come home but I don't want to. I like my memory of it too much.

Here then, as of right this minute and in alphabetical order, is my All Time Top Ten Movie List:

• 633 Mosquito Squadron
• Alien
• Aliens
• America's Sweethearts
• Best Seller
• Carrie
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Contact
• Dead On Arrival
• Die Hard 2
• Fargo
• Fight Club
• Independence Day
• Intolerable Cruelty
• Love Actually
• Memento
• Notting Hill
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• Planet of the Apes (the original)
• Scream
• Silent Running
• Something's Gotta Give
• Striking Distance
• Suspiria
• Terminator Two: Judgement Day
• The Bedroom Window
• The Fifth Element
• The Goodbye Girl
• The Silence of the Lambs
• The Sixth Sense
• The Usual Suspects
• Thelma and Louise
• There's Something About Mary
• This is Spinal Tap
• True Lies
• When Harry Met Sally
• Zardoz
• Zoolander
• Zulu

Okay, that's thirty nine. Seriously though, how can you have a top ten? I've already thought of another five since I typed my list. I couldn't whittle it down to ten if you threatened to cut off my gonads with a rusty hacksaw.

My worst movie list though? That's too easy. It's a list of two.

• 'Damage' starring Jeremy Irons, Juliet Binoche and Miranda Richardson. One hundred and eleven minutes of my life that I can never reclaim.
• Cruise, Kidman and Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut'. Just awful. 

Both movies were about obsessive love and both were touted as containing some of the most graphic sex scenes ever filmed for mainstream cinema. Graphic, yes. Sexy, most definitely not. Rubbish, absolutely.

I see dead people,
oldblodger