Now hold on a second there, cowboy (or cowgirl, depending on thine gender), before we get cracking into the top ten of my all-time favorite movies, let's go ahead and name some honorable mentions! Let's face it, I couldn't do "Top 40", "Top 50", or even "Top 60" because two reasons:
- Length: I'd be doing this list until I'm thirty, considering the rate I come and go on the blog. I picked thirty as a decent number that has both the perfect amount of quality and quantity. Of course quality is subjective because what I find to be my favorites probably aren't your favorites.
- Singularity: If I kept increasing the number of movies that I'm ranking as my favorite, the feeling of them being special and unique to me would go way down just to accommodate them all. Pretty soon I'd be ranking one hundred of my favorite movies just because I'm a sucker who can't make up my mind.
So anywho, let's go ahead and give you, let's say fifteen of my runners-up. Now, these are completely unranked. This is not like it's 31-45 or anything. Just fifteen movies that I really considered adding to this list, but I felt either weren't special enough, didn't resonate with me all the well but I still enjoy deeply each time I watch them, have great nostalgic love for, or just plain love showing people or talking about. Plus, since there's fifteen in this one post, I'm going to just quickly summarize them all and why I love them. 1-2 sentences, max.
- Major League - The infamous 1989 baseball comedy starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger and Wesley Snipes as a rag-tag team of recruits for the Cleveland Indians as the team's new owner tries desperately to purposefully tank the year to relocate the team to a much nicer city with promises of riches and a new stadium. This movie has got some classic lines, plus I love it for being an R-rated baseball romp. The sequel is passable, but this one's pretty special.
- The Brady Bunch Movie - Talk about an oddball of a movie choice that I find utterly hilarious. A simple mid-90s take on the classic story of a lovely lady and her man named Brady with six kids under one roof. This movie makes so many in-jokes about the show, and its awkward mashing of this 60s family with the 90s setting makes for so many more points of laughter. Top notch.
- GoldenEye - The James Bond film from 1995 that spawned one kick-ass video game, my favorite Bond movie of them all. Pierce Brosnan's first outing as the British spy sees him tackle a Russian crime syndicate looking to use an EMP weapon to wipe out the fact they're about to steal boatloads of money from the British government. Pierce Brosnan is a fantastic Bond and Sean Bean makes an equal foe in tone and presence.
- Full Metal Jacket - The premier Vietnam War movie comes from legendary film director Stanley Kubrick. Known for helping to bring famous army voice R. Lee Ermey to the mainstream as Gunner Sgt. Hartman, Full Metal Jacket is a two-act story, showing the first act as boot camp trainees and the other half is the recruits deployed into Vietnam itself. Some gruesome stuff, in no way a comedy, but still a fun ride nonetheless.
- Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino's most popular crime movie amongst many people, Pulp Fiction is a magazine style crime movie following the exploits of two mobster hitmen whose lives intertwine with those around them. Told in an out of order manner, Pulp Fiction has so many jokes made from its material, including the birth of the "$5 Milkshake".
- Jaws - Steven Spielberg's infamous golden-age blockbuster about three guys in a marine water town that go out hunting for a killer shark terrorizing their beaches. The movie starts out really well, but gets even better when the three men, Hooper, Quint and Brody, board Quint's boat Orca and go hunting for the shark themselves.
- Tommy Boy - Arguably Chris Farley's most popular film that he was (some people will prefer Black Sheep but this one's my favorite). Tommy Boy sees Farley drag SNL co-star and good friend David Spade on a cross-country expedition to sell his dad's thirty-thousand brake pads to keep the company afloat after his father's passing. I mean it's Farley and Spade on a road trip movie, come on.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The first and greatest (in my opinion) movie made out of the franchise by Eastman and Laird, the 1990 comic book movie follows four mutant ninja turtles as they rise from the shadows of the sewers and conquer the imminent threat in New York City, the Foot Clan, and its leader, The Shredder. I love it for its dark and gritty take, similar to the comic books that spawned it.
- Heavyweights - One of the silliest mid 90s Disney movies out there, Heavyweights follows Gerald Garner as he travels to Camp Hope, a camp designed to help kids lose weight. During his stay, the camp is sold to up-and-coming fitness mogul Tony Perkis, played by Ben Stiller. Soon, they realize Tony is not what he seems and goes to extreme measures to make the kids lose weight. I like it for being a Disney film that's not afraid to make adult jokes or to kind of unsettle you, with the video shown to the parents about what Perkis's camp has been like.
- Forrest Gump - You know this one, the greatest triumph story from 1994 starring Tom Hanks as the slow-witted, simple-minded yutz known as Forrest Gump. We live Forrest's life with him as we see him inspire Elvis's hip shaking, help Bear Bryant take Alabama to fame and glory, fight the war in Vietnam, meet three US Presidents, found a world-renowned shrimp comany Bubba-Gump Shrimp; all while vying for the attention of his childhood crush, Jenny. Its probably the greatest feel-good story ever made. What else can I say?
- Watchmen - This one, you probably also have probably heard of. The infamous 2009 adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, Watchmen follows retired superheroes whose destinies are intertwined and documented when Russian-US relations deteriorate it results in one of them taking matters into their own hands. It's gritty, it's artistic, and it may have infuriated fans for making changes, but I still like it. The three-and-a-half-hour epic complete with the Tales from the Black Freighter comic book tale is awesome.
- Aliens - You've probably heard me mention this one before. James Cameron's first of two excellent sequels that he's directed, Aliens shows Ellen Ripley suit up, lock and load and charge back to the compound of an Earth colony with a group of space marines to exterminate the alien race that tormented her in Alien. It's action-packed, it's an isolated mood, and it all feels very much like a video game as it progresses. Good stuff.
- Gran Torino - The sure-as-shit supposed Best Picture Oscar winner from 2008, Gran Torino shows us Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, a man of Polish decent who just wants to be left alone as he wittles away in a Korean neighborhood. He becomes embroiled in a heated family affair after crooks try to coax his neighbor into stealing his Gran Torino. Emotional, driven, and another great story of triumph and perseverance.
- National Lampoon's Vacation - One of the original "road trips from hell" movies, Harold Ramis's 1983 romp starring Chevy Chase is the first film to show the Griswold family's misadventures, this time as they try and trek across country to the theme park Walley World. Classic comedic gold full of so many quotable lines, mostly from Chevy Chase himself.
- My Cousin Vinny - One of the best courtroom dramas out there, mainly because a lot of it is funny too. Ralph Macchio plays William Gambini, as he and his friend Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Winfield) are incarcerated for a crime they didn't commit. In charge of proving their innocence in a court of law is Joe Pesci as Vincent Gambini, William's cousin. With Marisa Tomei as his girlfriend Mona-Lisa Vito and Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) as Judge Chamberlain Haller, the entire movie makes for one funny ride. The banter between Vinny and Chamberlain is priceless each and every scene they're in.
Well that was it. My fifteen runners-up. I'll see you guys in the top 10!
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