About: Movies

Until I get something more useful up, this is a (largely meaningless in terms of order) Top 30 in movies for me. It’s not about the Top 30 movies of all time, it’s about my Top 30, so that you have some idea where I’m coming from. Donnie Darko has been number one since the first day I saw it, back in May, 2002. It supplanted In the Mouth of Madness, which stayed there since I first saw it in 1996 or so. After that, it’s the movies I’d call to mind immediately if asked (assuming my memory was tip-top, oiled and all gears moving), then everything else I’d eventually add.

Many of them have been there simply for my entire life, or at least since I was around 12 or so and my tastes were beginning to congeal. Westerns are all relatively recent additions (last decade, mostly a few years more recent than that). There are also probably some that I’d almost definitely include if I really, really got down to it (Oldboy, perhaps–the original Chan-Wook Park, not the Spike Lee joint).

A semi-organized backlog of full movie reviews I’ve written can be found here, though it only covers a period of about 2-3 years. In that time, though, there are something like 370 reviews, so it’s not too bad.

Probably indicative of the very personal side of my taste, more than half of these 30 are from the 1980s–and full half are from exactly four years: 1984, 1987, 1986, and 1988. You’d think this would describe my childhood, but that run of years starts with the year I was born and ends with me at four years old. You might think, then, that it indicates what was shown on television in my youth–not really. Maybe, then, the movies my parents would’ve been watching because of *their* childhood? Well, due to the age of the movies, sure, I guess. But due to the age of my parents? Well, that’s certainly why I like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle…so, no, the 1980s were definitely not their childhood, adolescence, nor even their early-adulthood-indicators-of-freedom. Heck, these aren’t even from the years my dad managed a movie theater (two are, but they’re from 1980 and 1981, and I believe he only showed the one from 1981).

Conclusion? I guess I’m kinda weird.

1. Donnie Darko (2001)
2. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
3. The Transformers – The Movie (1986)
4. Yellow Submarine (1968)
5. The Monster Squad (1987)
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (1990)
7. Gremlins (1984)
8. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
9. The Point (1971)
10. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
11. Dead Alive (1992)
12. Lethal Weapon (1987)
13. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
14. Near Dark (1987)
15. Beetlejuice (1988)
16. The Lost Boys (1987)
17. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
18. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
19. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1984)
20. Evil Dead 2 (1987)
21. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
22. Ghostbusters (1984)
23. Knafayim Shvurot (2002)
24. Streets of Fire (1984)
25. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
26. The Long Riders (1980)
27. The Frighteners (1996)
28. The Toxic Avenger (1984)
29. Good Night And Good Luck (2005)
30. The Cowboys (1972)