What makes 2001 the earliest
eligible year? I've seen over 100 movies released that year. As always, that
100 movie cutoff is required for me to bother making a top 10 list. Anything
less than that won't do. If more than 10% of the applicable movies make the
list, that's a pretty weak superlative, in my opinion. Also, as always, I'll
include the list of the 2001 movies that I've seen. So, when you wonder how In
the Bedroom didn't make the top 10, you'll be able to figure out that I
haven't seen it. I'm defining the movie's year based on BoxOfficeMojo, or, if
it wasn't released in U.S. theaters, I'll go by IMDB. I can't think of any
movies that would be in dispute because of this, but it's worth noting.
Of course, feel free to tell
me how I'm under-appreciating some movie. My aim isn't to make some objectively
indisputable list. Rather, it's to express what left an impression on me. Many
of these movies I haven't seen in over a decade. I fully accept that some of
these deserve another shot. I love rediscovering movies almost as much as
discovering new ones.
1st Cut
Time for some cuts. I
started with a list of 108 movies. I had to use some Disney Channel original
movies to push me over the edge, but they count, dammit. To whittle down the
list, I started by pairing each movie up and ranking those pairs. I combined
those ranked pairs with another pair and ranked accordingly to give me groups
of 4 ranked. I kept combining until they got to ranked groups of 10 from pools
of 16. The first cut is from the 6 or so that first got eliminated from each
set. I go into this level of detail to point out that not all cuts are created
equal. Scary Movie 2 and The
Animal are among the worst movies I've ever seen. Tomcats and From
Hell made no impression on me. America's Sweethearts and Black
Knight just had to make room for something else. A few of these I probably
even like better than some of the second round cuts, but my focus was only on
the top 10, not making sure all the cuts were equal.
Along Came a Spider
Crazy/Beautiful
Rock Star
Jimmy Neutron: Boy
Genius
Saving Silverman
Evolution
The
Score
O
Tomcats
Scary Movie 2
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Dr. Doolittle 2
Planet of the Apes
Black Knight
Driven
From Hell
Head Over Heels
The Animal
Down to Earth
American Outlaws
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Angel Eyes
America's Sweethearts
Joy Ride
Cats &
Dogs
Corky Romano
Don't Say a Word
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron
Jeremy
Novocaine
Ginger Snaps
Zebra Lounge
Hounded
Jett Jackson: The Movie
2nd Cut
The second cut gets rid of
the last of the Disney Channel movies, although I'll note that Motocrossed
does have a special place in my heart. I think most of these cuts explain
themselves. There are a couple that I should explain though. I've never been
much of a Wes Anderson fan, so that + the 13 years since the one time I saw The
Royal Tenenbaums all but guarantees it would be cut. I respect the hell out
of the anarchy of Wet Hot American Summer and the brilliance of the
cast, but that humor simply doesn't work for me. Made, The Majestic, and A.I.
could've all made it a round further if the pairs broke a different way. And, I
associate Jurassic Park III with the day I got my braces put on, so it's
amazing it even made it to the second cut.
Not Another Teen Movie
Bridget Jones's Diary
Shallow Hal
3000 Miles to Graceland
Original Sin
Summer Catch
Save the Last Dance
Motocrossed
K-PAX
The Luck of the Irish
Valentine
Big Fat Liar
Zenon: The Zequel
The Majestic
Monster's Ball
Jurassic Park III
Riding in Cars with Boys
The Fast and the Furious
Enemy at the
Gates
Wet Hot American Summer
The Royal Tenenbaums
Swordfish
Sugar & Spice
Say It Isn't So
The Wedding Planner
Antitrust
Blow
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Thirteen Ghosts
The Glass House
Domestic Disturbance
The Others
Two Can Play That Game
Vanilla Sky
Joe Dirt
3rd Cut
At this point, the list has
narrowed to the point that you can assume I have some level of affection for
all the movies listed. I was surprised to see Mulholland Drive last this
long because, thus far, I haven't been that impressed with David Lynch's work.
The movie is a big puzzle, which has made it hard to forget, and perhaps, that
will be the key to finally figuring him out.
Moulin Rouge!
Mulholland Drive
Training Day
Hardball
Hannibal
American Pie 2
The Princess Diaries
Monsters Inc.
Next 10
That gets it down to 20. I
like all of these movies quite a bit. I think they are all 4 star movies on my
Netflix. Only one or two were strongly considered for the top ten. To give some
context though, the gap between my 4th and 5th rated movies is larger than the
gap between 5th and 20th.
Note: These are
alphabetized, not ranked. Think of them as the honorable mentions.
Ali - Will Smith's first and
arguably best bid for an Oscar. It probably put the idea in Jamie Foxx's head
too. It falls for a lot of the standard biopic trappings, like trying to fit
too much of Muhammad Ali's life in, but it's a very entertaining mix of
biography and boxing.
Amelie - I'll be honest, I've only
seen this once and remember it more in images than as a whole. And that poster
was ubiquitous while I was in college. If I finally got around to seeing it
again, I'm sure my good feelings about it would solidify into a greater appreciation.
Black Hawk Down - First of all, that cast.
Terrific, nail-biting, intense direction from Ridley Scott. It's another one
that would benefit from me seeing it again. It definitely hits the spot if
you're in the mood for a war movie without Nazis.
Donnie Darko - I loved the movie in high
school. I've cooled on it significantly since then, especially as I've realized
how many of the more enigmatic elements that I thought were profound at the
time were actually plot holes or bad writing. That said, I'd be lying if I said
Gary Jules' cover of "Mad World" at the end doesn't have an effect on
me. Oh, and that's a helluva cast that's only gotten better over the years.
Ghost World - This is a fun, weird
little comic adaptation by the director who went on to make Bad Santa.
It's got a pre-Lost in Translation Scarlett Johansson and post-American
Beauty Thora Birch. Steve Buscemi plays a fine sad-sack. It's not the most
hopeful movie in the world, but I'm ok with that.
Heartbreakers - Several of my spots at
the top belong to HBO favorites that I caught a half dozen times one summer
which burned their way into my memory. This Jennifer Love Hewitt/Sigourney
Weaver comedy is certainly one of those. It's a funny movie in a polite chuckle
kind of way.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back - The first time
Kevin Smith got a real budget, he made a crazy biblical film that was
surprisingly well received and made him a director a lot of people wanted to
work with. The second time he got a real budget, he invited everyone with a
pulse who was interested to make a cameo in this crazy chase movie about two
side character who should probably never be the lead characters in a movie. It
was a whole lotta fun.
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone - There's two ways to look at this movie. 1) Christopher Columbus made a
slavish adaptation that came out too soon and robbed the series of a thematic
throughline and consistent vision. 2) It's an uneven movie that brought
together an impressive group of big name actors, assembled arguably the best
collection of mostly unknown child actors in history, and set a visual template
that has become iconic. I choose to look at it as the latter.
Shrek - Beyond being clever,
funny, and efficiently entertaining, this was actually a pretty big deal, when
you think about it. This was the first computer animated competitor to really
push back on Pixar's dominance and opened up a lot of studios to the idea of
competing on that front.
Zoolander - No movie that's quoted as
much as this one should be allowed to fall too far down the list.
Top 10
I have no explanation for
this. It's another HBO favorite that I watched countless times. Tim Allen is
fine. I sympathized with his character a lot. This was the first time I'd seen
Julie Bowen since Happy Gilmore and she's even more charming in this.
Hayden Panetierre cemented herself as my favorite child actor of the era by
following up Remember the Titans with this. I even enjoy how
unapologetically Target spnsored this movie. I'm kind of scared to rewatch it,
because it's been at least a decade and I currently have nothing but fond
memories of it.
9. A Beautiful Mind
It won Best Picture that
year and it's easy to see why. I don't really care if it's all that accurate to
the true story. Ron Howard's direction is great, as are the performances by
Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly.
8. Serendipity
This is when the movies
start getting really near and dear to my heart. This Kate Beckinsale/John
Cusack romcom is sloppily high-concept, but it's a high concept I really dig.
All the close calls throughout the movie are the kind of thing I literally
developed my One Big Leap principle because of. It so earnest about the conceit though, that it doesn't
bother me. And who doesn't want to see Beckinsale and Cusack end up together?
7. Legally Blonde
90% of the world's love of
Reese Witherspoon comes from this movie. Sure, Election, Cruel
Intentions, Pleasantville, and Walk the Line help, but
imagine Reese Witherspoon without Elle Woods. Your life just got a lot sadder,
right? This movie is emblematic of the post-teen comedy, pre-Apatow style of
comedy from the early 2000s -they arent' quite romcoms and aren't quite adult
comedy - that I have, perhaps, an
unearned affection for (also see Miss Congeniality, Sweet Home
Alabama, or anything else starring Witherspoon or Sandra Bullock).
6. Get Over It
Any movie with Sisqo should
be buried and labeled as an artifact of that pop culture moment, never to be
seen again. Somehow though, I still love this movie. It's massively dated
thanks to people like Sisqo and Vitamin C being prominently featured. The humor
is that safe, PG-13, pretends to be raunchy but isn't really style that the
turn of the century was lousy with (and I was young enough to still love almost
all of them). The cast has a young Kirsten Dunst, Ben Foster, Shane West, Colin
Hanks, Zoe Saldana, and Mila Kunis are being bubbly and fun to watch. Martin
Short gets to be weird in a supporting
role out of a completely different movie. And, the music for the Midsummer
Night's Dream musical is surprisingly catchy.
5. Rat Race
Dumb, dumb movie. Big,
entertaining, gung-ho cast. There's nothing sophisticated or subtle about the
comedy of this movie, but it's willing to go anywhere and everywhere to get a
laugh. It's like someone wrote about 50 sketches for Mad TV then fit them all
into a single movie. Somehow it works as a whole.
4. Memento
OK, this is when it gets
really serious. A lot of the movies below this I've added all sorts of
qualifiers to, because I know that a healthy bit of nostalgia is driving them.
That stops here (...well, mostly). Memento announced Christopher Nolan
as a director to watch. Many people lament his move away from small indie
movies like this. I'm not one of those people, because I think he's just as
good with a $100 million budget as $100,000. If you wanted to call this his
best movie though, I wouldn't stop you. This is an all-time great script
(inventive, clever, layered) that relies on some equally exceptional
editing. You'd think a movie with such a
big twist wouldn't hold up with rewatches. That's not the case with Memento.
It's a puzzle that even after you know what it looks like, you enjoy putting
the pieces together.
3. The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring
It's absurd that this isn't
#1 because no one movie has ever blown me away like this one. Sure, the scope
of Titanic was impressive. The Phantom Menace really awoke my
understanding of movie fandom (which is why I'll defend it to my dying days). The
Fellowship of the Ring was the first, and possibly only (along with Two
Towers and Return of the King) time I've ever watched something that
felt really epic. I've never felt so small in a theater as when I was
introduced to Middle Earth. This must've been how people felt the first time
they watched Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments back in
the day.
2. A Knight's Tale
I've moved way past thinking
of this as some HBO guilty pleasure*. It's a stone cold classic in my book.
This brazenly anachronistic tale of a servant pretending to be a medieval
knight somehow mixes Heath Ledger at peak charm, a 70's rock soundtrack of the
most obvious needle drops imaginable, and a potentially preachy story of the
haves vs. the have-nots into something that works completely. This is tied with
my number #1 for the closest I've ever come to being able to quote an entire
movie. That starts with Paul Bettany as Geoffrey Chaucer and his bombastic
speeches. I particularly like how the film shows off just enough historical
knowledge of Chaucer to revel at how inaccurate their interpretation is. Career
best roles for Mark Addy and Alan Tudyk too. Watching this movie is the closest
comparison I can find to the feeling of getting to have dessert before dinner.
*Besides, I don't believe in
guilty pleasures.
1. Ocean's Eleven
I feel like any time I see a movie that assembles a
cast full of alphas who should be leading their own movie instead, they are
chasing this high. Steven Soderbergh assembled a bunch of A-listers, got them to
agree to smaller roles, and filmed a movie during their down time on a Vegas
vacation. I know they treated the movie more seriously than that, but I kind of
like the idea of a bunch of pals joining up to make a movie. It's why I never
fully dismiss what Adam Sandler's doing with his career. It helps to explain my
love of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's movies. It's even why I liked the Miami
Heat circa 2010-2014. It helps that the finished movie is as confidently slick
as anything you'll see. It's so overflowing with great one-liners, that they're
often thrown away at the end of scene or drowned out my the music. The
convoluted heist actually holds up under inspection far more than it really
needed to. There's a group of movies I love that I describe as "People
doing their damn job" movies. These are movies about people who are good
at what they do doing that thing well. It's normally reserved for more mundane
jobs or straightforward tasks
(Denial and Eyein the Sky are
good examples). Ocean's Eleven is a "People doing their damn
job" movie, only about glamorous thieves. It is one of the few movies
I've ever watched twice in a row. I'm not sure how exactly that bakes into my
ranking, but it must be a big plus.
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