The show At the Movies was once a favorite show of mine. It is of course the show that started as Siskel and Ebert and then became Ebert and Roeper at the movies. When Disney wanted to mess with it and make it more about entertainment, they hired two douchebags and I stopped watching. Realizing their mistake Disney went back to what worked and hired two great film critics and took the show back to really reviewing movies. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. Scott of The New York Times are two of my favorites to read and they were my two favorite guest hosts with Ricard Roeper, so my excitement level for At the Movies went right back up. Starting this past week, the show is going to feature each man unveiling one movie a week in their top 10 of the decade.
A few months ago Robbie approached me with the idea of coming up with a best of the decade list and it kind of festered in my mind, but a few weeks ago I started to really think about it. I rewatched a bunch of movies and thought long and hard about it. Then I watched At the Movies this weekend and it clinched it for me: I needed a list. So, Saturday night I started a list. It started at 50 movies, then I got it down to 33. Monday the list got whittled down to 25 and finally yesterday afternoon I got the the list all the way down to my definitive top 10.
Before I unveil how this is going to work, I need to talk about how I decided on these 10 movies. It is a combination of things and different aspects are weighed differently. I wasn't sure if I should do just the ten best, or most replayable, or maybe 10 movies I felt defined this decade of film making. Should I look at them for what I felt at the time of their release, or movies that hold up over time? Eventually I came to the conclusion that it should be a bit of all of that. So my list will incorporate a lot of those aspects for different movies.
Alright, so the plan is this, for the next ten weeks I will release 1 movie on my list to coincide with At the Movies. I will also list each of those guys' pick and talk about for a brief second. This might turn out to be a colossal disaster and it is very time consuming considering I have like 4 people who actually read this, but I think I want it for me, so here we go!
Number 10
Michael Phillips: Minority Report- I like this choice, but only because it is unexpected, which is maybe not a good enough reason to be on a list like this. It did make my initial 50, but part of me wondered if it was just because Speilberg should be in consideration for any sort of best of list. I love the movie, but when I watched it over the last weekend, I didn't get the same excitement. Phillips did make a really nice case for it. This guy is so good on the television!
A.O. Scott: Million Dollar Baby- I did not care for this movie, really. My list does not include a Clint Eastwood movie, but if it did it would have been Mystic River. This movie is clunky in the pacing, and ultimately boring. I loved Morgan Freeman's performance, but that was about it. Scott does a good job of explaining why he picked it and this movie is very much a critic's kind of movie.
My pick: (500) Days of Summer- I know it feels early to put a movie from this year on the list, but seeing as how I have seen the movie 4 times, I think it qualifies. As a romantic comedy with a twist, I feel like this movie best expresses a group of young people who grew up in an age where movies and pop songs became our reality. This does not mean this movie is my favorite of this year (it is in the conversation for sure), but it best expresses the idea of what this list is to me. I would not be surprised if in a year or two, I think this movie should have been higher. That is how much I loved it. It is visually interesting, it has great dialog, a wonderfully intimate story and two adorably perfect actors. Plus a dance sequence to Hall and Oates!
No comments:
Post a Comment