Top 10 Movies of All Time

Well, this is the big one...the big kahuna...the top gun...the one list to rule them all. If you ask anybody that knows me, they will say that I have a Top 10 list for everything (beer, food, tv shows, cities, etc...). My favorite Top 10 list, however, is movies. I absolutely love listing off my favorite movies, because I know nobody else has the exact same list as me.

It's a lot more difficult than you might realize to put together a list of your favorite movies...let alone a top 10 list. That means you can only pick 10 of your favorite movies, out of all the movies you have seen. It actually takes a bit of strategy (nerd alert). You have to write down a list of all of your favorite movies, then decide, in order, which ones belong in the top 10. I guess that is not much of a strategy, but, it takes time. It probably took me an hour to put together this list. So here it is, in order, my Top 10 movies of all time.

1. The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece. It is almost impossible to NOT like this movie. It is the ultimate 'guy movie'. Everything from the music, the acting, the cinematography, is amazing.
2. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - OK, I know, this is technically not one movie. But, if you watch all three in a row, it is like watching a very long movie, so to me, it is one movie (plus I don't want to take up three spots for all three movies). Peter Jackson did the almost impossible...he brought one of the most creative and mind blowing fantasies to life. A classic tale of Good vs. Evil, friendship, love, and honor. Never have I been so captivated by a story quite like The Lord of the Rings.
3. Goodfellas - A movie that can take both the beauty and brutality of the Italian-American mafia. A perfect movie in every way. Scene for scene, this is a good look at perfection. Martin Scorsese literally grabs a hold of the audience and throws them into the life of a foot soldier. The music, the drama, the violence...everything in this movie deserves the recognition that it gets.
4. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - The ultimate in black comedies. Peter Sellers is absolutely hilarious as the German Dr. Strangelove (also two other characters), with a strange abnormality in his right arm that forces him to salute in the Nazi fashion. I also consider the scene in which Major Kong rides the nuclear weapon down to the target to be the best scene in movie history. Stanley Kubrick was able to transform the Cold War into a harsh comedic reality with the doomsday machine, nuclear warfare, and the political satire.
   
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - What an absolutely beautiful movie. It takes multiple viewings to fully appreciate it (it also takes a very long and patient attention span). This movie takes a good look at human curiosity. In a sense, this movie digs deep into the human soul. It asks the big question, 'Why are we here?' It bends reality with imagination. It distorts human logic with machine intelligence. It is, by far, the best science fiction movie ever made.
   
6. A Clockwork Orange - Can conditioning truly work? What happens when you condition a person to be good, when deep down they are truly bad? They become a clockwork orange. The first half of this movie is considered to be one of the most artistically and creatively shot movies ever. Stanley Kubrick beautifully combined Beethoven's best work, the 9th, with a satanic and corrupt young man.
   
7. On the Waterfront - Marlon Brando's best performance. 'I could have been a contender.'
   
8. Fight Club - Tyler Durden says 'use soap'. Tyler Durden is inside all of us. A person that is sick and tired of the materialistic society we have created. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton both shine as the main character(s). The movie is fast paced, in your face, and has one of the best twists since The Sixth Sense.
   
9. There Will Be Blood - Daniel Day Lewis, as the greedy and corrupt oil man, gives one of the best on-screen performances I have ever seen. This movie is shot as if Stanley Kubrick were directing it (which, if you can't tell by now, is my favorite director). The ending actually reminds me of exactly what Kubrick would do...end abrupt, end with style, end with confusion, but end with a bang.
   
10. American Beauty - 'Sometimes there's just so much beauty, in the world...I feel like my heart is going to explode.' What a great line. This movie is about the things that people take for granted...their family, their home, their jobs, etc.... Kevin Spacey plays the boring middle aged dad that finally realizes that he has wasted 40 years of his life trying to abide by what society tells him to do. The last year of his life is lived to the fullest. The message of this movie is very powerful, the acting is superb, and the movie is shot beautifully.

*Note worthy movies

• Silence of the Lambs
• The Shining
• The Godfather: Part II
• Apocalypse Now
• Pulp Fiction