Note: I’m working on more serious post, but I have a personal goal to post every Friday. So here’s some popcorn reading! (Heh.)

Another note: These ratings are mine and mine alone. Your mileage won’t just vary; you will run out of gas, if you think I’m offering any kind of metric beyond, these are movies that I like. I’m inspired by Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. 

Honorable Mentions

Initially, I had both Ratatoille and The Princess Bride on my list, and both of them just got squished out by other films. I love that Ratatoille is about the pleasure of food. That moment when the critic eats the ratatouille is transcendent. Plus, it’s about class. This is easily my favorite Pixar flim. And I can quote every word of The Princess Bride– that’s worth a mention!

My other honorable mention is really a scene. Quicksilver’s scene (you know the one!) in X-Men: Days of Future Past is really a perfect scene. The Pink Floyd t-shirt, the soup-tasting, the daddy issues. No notes. It, unfortunately, is placed in an otherwise meh movie. 

#10 Children of Men

This 2006 fim is dystopian and pretty bleak. It may not be your top choice for pandemic viewing either. But this film is ultimately about hope, which is a topic that means something to me. I still think about this movie often, years after seeing it, and that’s one of the ways I judge how much I like a film.

#9 12 Monkeys

All of the stories about Bruce Willis and the disability issues he may be grappling with are pretty sad. This science fiction movie is probably my favorite Willis film, even including Die Hard and Pulp Fiction, both of which I liked (on recent rewatches, Die Hard stands up and is a Christmas movie; Pulp Fiction doesn’t hold up as well and is not a Christmas movie). 12 Monkeys also stars Brad Pitt in his second best role (the first is True Romance: “Get some beer! And some cleaning products.”). Down side: this movie is a downer.

#8 Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

I’ve already written a blog post on this one, but several years later it remains a thoughtful film and one I’m always happy to rewatch.

#7 Mad Max: Fury Road

Alternate title: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Surviving a Dystopian Hellscape.

#6 Moulin Rouge

Oh, now we get to the controversial choices. Plenty of folks despised Baz Luhrman’s musical when it came out, and I’m assuming that it’s still not well-loved. But this is my jam. Renditions of popular songs woven into the plot? Ewan McGregor as a poor, heartsick writer? (Also, shout-out to McGregor, who is apparently getting dragged for saying racism isn’t welcome in Star Wars. Come on, fam. I already wrote about The Last Jedi, too. Suck it.) Overwrought plot and love story? Yes, yes, yes.

#5 Jurassic Park

Here’s the thing. I love this movie irrationally. I liked Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, I like dinosaurs, I like Jeff Goldblum, I like Laura Dern. Honestly, it’s fine that the movie killed off Muldoon and Gennaro. Big game hunters and lawyers are not heroes. Mathematicians, sure! The movie manages to take a lot of very good things and make them great. 

If I may wax further poetic, the great thing about Jurassic Park is that the dinosaurs are not the villains. This is a story about institutions, power, control, money, and knowledge. The flaw of the movie is imagining Hammond as a sweet grandpa instead of the capitalist caricature that the book correctly understands him to be. 

Still, that Jell-O. The velociraptors sliding across the kitchen floor. “Clever girl.” Hell, I’m going to watch it again right now.

#4 Amelie

I’m back! Very different from Jurassic Park is Amelie, which was a formative film for me about sex, pleasure, and identity. I also enjoy watching it in French.

#3 John Wick

John Wick is a perfect film. Fight me. (Just kidding, I’m not John Wick, please don’t fight me.) I feel like this is a movie that understands what movies are supposed to be. I am also a sucker for the world-building that gets expanded in the sequels.

It’s also cool in the sense that the more you know about John Wick, the more there is to like about it. Keanu Reeves did his own stunts, for example. Movies with Mikey has a great video on the background!

#2 The Matrix

I’ve called The Matrix my favorite movie for years, probably since I saw it at the dollar theater during its first run. Like the Wachowski sisters, I’m endlessly shocked and angered that certain people (you know who they are) can so egregiously misread this text, and I’m glad that that Revolutions makes it abundantly clear. This film is unabashedly trans and queer, and it holds up to modern viewings.

#1 Arrival

Do you ever feel sadness that is built up in you, sometimes for weeks, and that sadness might be for a specific reason, or it might just be universe-sadness? When I was a kid, I used to feel that build-up and then read Charlotte’s Web. I’d just sob and sob at the end of the book. Now, as a grown-up, I watch Arrival for the same catharsis. 

It’s beautifully, painfully, gutwrenchingly sad to me. But this movie to me says what I feel about the world and relationships and being alive, which is: it’s all so hard, impossibiy difficult, and yet, given a choice, I’d choose it. I’d choose all of my same struggles because I think that being a human is wonderful and perfect, both when it’s joyful and sweet and when it’s wretched and painful. The film also connects these human experiences with language and communication, juxtaposing human communication with alien language in a way that speaks to me and my interests very closely. 

Jesus, I’m sobbing right now just thinking about it. When I first drafted this list, Arrival was lower down, but, as I write this, I have considered what this film means to me and promoted it. I know that earlier I mentioned 12 Monkeys being a downer as a sort of demerit; Arrival is sad, but it’s not a downer. Arrival loves humans and life and pain. It’s important not to conflate sadness with a dearth of hope.

Anyway, that’s the end of my list, which, per Hornby, says more about me than these movies. But y’all are welcome to have at it in the comments! I also welcome recommendations. My movie experience is pretty weirdly spread out, like a gerrymandered red state district, and I’m open to expansion.