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My "top 33 favorite movies" list (now 34!) came about as a birthday present for my movie buff friend (and comic artist) Sean Wang, and was initially compiled by his girlfriend Peg Twardowski as part of a compilation of his friends' all time favorite movies. I feel confident in saying this must have been one of the stranger lists in the book. It was really supposed to be a "top 20 list," but after paring down from 80 to 33, I realized that there was a line in the sand between these 33 and the rest of the movies on my list. To try to draw a line at 20 would have created chaos in my universe. But the line at 33 looked just right. If there is a movie out there I overlooked, definitely let me hear about it, but be forewarned: it's probably due more to my questionable taste than not having seen the movie in question (unless it's a foreign film, that's just not my forte). My criteria for the list was a simple but exacting one: which films have affected me the most - which have made me think, or perhaps even marked a turning point in my own development? Which ones have kicked me right in the gut or made me cry like a small child? And more importantly, which ones have held up to repeated viewings over the years? For example, I found both Elephant Man and Blue Velvet to be enormously memorable movies, but I've never had the stomach to watch either one of them again. On the other hand, I watch a good portion of Vision Quest almost every time it shows up on cable. Is Vision Quest a better movie than Elephant Man? That's an argument too foolish even for me to make. But I can tell you which one of the two is my favorite, and isn't that the point of a list like this? That's why I didn't eliminate movies that may give the impression that I'm a shallow Hollywood movie whore. Of course, each movie had to hold up as a whole, which would disqualify many flawed movies with great performances (e.g. Denzel Washington in Hurricane, Kevin Bacon in Murder in the First) and inspired scenes (e.g. Being John Malkovich and Fight Club) that ultimately didn't quite come together for me as a total film. The one exception to this "total film" rule on the list seems to be Office Space, which definitely derails later in the movie, but by then there are just too many dark insights and big laughs to not give it its due. After I made this list, I had a chance to second-guess myself and consider many possible oversights, like Waiting for Guffman, Never Cry Wolf, The Insider and Parenthood (The Insider is making a push and might crack the list soon). And then there's also the question of recent movies that just haven't settled in long enough to discern infatuation from something more lasting (Ghost World, Waking Life, Tape, and Memento fit into this category). However, there has been a recent addition to the top of the list - a film that I now officially nominate as the most underrated movie ever made. Say what you like about Vanilla Sky, it remains a movie that raises provocative issues about beauty, success, love versus sexual manipulation, and free will versus fatalism. And I'm all set with the "holes in the plot" criticism. I've watched the movie enough times to vouch for its structural cohesiveness. Cruise-bashers out there can come over to my house and watch a Rain Main, Born on the Fourth of July and Vanilla Sky triple feature and then try to make the case that he can't put forth a gutty and serious performance. If you want to talk about a Tom Cruise vanity project with plotholes all over the place, then let's talk Minority Report. All righty then. Now that I've made this recent edition, I think we're stuck with this list of 34 movies for a while. Probably the bigger question is not What have I overlooked, but rather, What is my problem? And that answer can only be relayed a little bit at a time. But maybe sometime over my favorite drink (seltzer with lime) we can get to the bottom of why these movies, to me, had merit and impact.
JR's Top 34 Movies of All Time
1. Vanilla Sky
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