- Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino's breakthrough film entered the pop cultural mainstream quickly, and its images remain indelible fifteen years later. While in memory this movie seems schizophrenic in its execution, the real mastery of the film is how well it fits together in practice. There are few cooler characters in cinema than Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Winnfield. Also one of the best soundtracks from any movie ever.
- Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Of all of Stanley Kubrick's fantastic movies, I think that Strangelove remains the most approachable. One hundred and fifty years from now, when students wonder what the Cold War was like, I hope that they turn to this movie. It's incredible that this movie was made in 1964, when the Cold War was still thirty-five years from coming to an end. Deeply, darkly funny, with a fantastic early appearance by James Earl Jones.
- Almost Famous (2000) I saw this movie with a good friend when he was going through a troubled weekend. This was one of the first movies where I felt that the filmmaker was really speaking to my own experience. In Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe made a movie that I think perfectly described the experience of being a bright young man. This is a special, special movie to me. Another film with a remarkable soundtrack.
- Aliens (1986) There are great science fiction movies, and great action movies, but James Cameron here made a great science fiction action movie. Ridley Scott's Alien feels a little slow and dated today, but this sequel holds up excellently. Heroine Ellen Ripley remains one of the most powerful female figures in cinema, and it's a shame that there haven't been more characters to carry her tradition forward into the 21st Century.
- Jaws (1975) Another nearly perfect film. I've seen this movie maybe fifteen times in the past five years, and I find more things to enjoy about it every year. Spielberg brought a television aesthetic to the big screen, and the techniques he brought remain salient nearly thirty-five years later. Robert Shaw's Quint is a fantastic character that has few peers.
- Goodfellas (1990) Few movies are as quotable as this Martin Scorcese classic. Another movie with a fantastic soundtrack, Goodfellas presents an apotheosis of the Scorcese method that combines the best parts of his earlier work in The Color of Money (a lost classic) and Raging Bull (which is better in memory perhaps than it is in fact).
- Silence of the Lambs (1991) This is a film that constant re-airing on cable has not ruined. Every time it comes on, no matter how recently I've seen it, this Jonathan Demme film is riveting. Too much credit is perhaps given today to the admittedly great performance by Anthony Hopkins, when the script is excellently put together and the rest of the cast is well-utilized.
- Say Anything (1989) I first saw this film when I was a very young man trying to figure out how I should operate in the world I was growing into. John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler gave me a kind of framework for the man that I wanted to become. Yes, he's a little bit of a doormat, and yes, Cusack's Dobler has ruined a generation of women on what a man should be like (if you haven't ever read Chuck Klosterman's "This Is Emo" on the subject, you really should). But anyone who says that this movie isn't good needs to re-watch the dinner scene with John Mahoney, Ione Skye, and Cusack.
- Heat (1995) A great thriller from Michael Mann. A movie with one of the all-time great ensemble casts (Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, etc., etc), it really described "cool" to me for a really long time. The dialogue crackles, even if Pacino's Detective Hanna hasn't aged as well as maybe we could have hoped.
- The Princess Bride (1987) Not loving The Princess Bride says more about the person who doesn't love it than it does about the film. This is a movie that any person, of any age, should find something to love inside. The William Goldman novel is a pleasure to read, but the addition of the framing device of a grandfather reading to his sick, fiesty grandson really takes this film over the top. I've never really been able to understand why Carey Elwes and Robin Wright never became bigger movie stars.
Looking at my list, a couple of things occur to me. One is that apparently it's true that things are never as good as they were when the individual was growing up. Seven of the ten movies on my list were released between my seventh and fifteenth birthdays. I want to say that this is because the years of 1987 and 1995 were a Second Golden Age for films, but I think that this is because these are movies that I associate with a certain time in my life. They were movies that really taught me how to love movies, and they happen to be ones I return to.
I also think that I'm especially attacted to movies with excellent pop soundtracks. I'm one of the few people I know who regularly buy movie soundtracks, and Goodfells and Pulp Fiction especially are movies that take advantage of their soundtracks, making certain songs impossible to hear without imagining their associated scenes. The two Cameron Crowe movies are very similar for me.
Finally, I'm going to admit that I'm a blatant apologist for Cameron Crowe. While I haven't seen Singles (and can't get anyone to watch it with me), I will make excuses for every single one of his films and how they're underappreciated. Yes, even Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown.
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