There have been many times over the last year in which I have denounced top movie lists. I have picked them apart. I jumped up and down screaming towards the heavens. Ok so I am a little overly dramatic in my reactions to film, but I am The Movie Whore and it comes with the gig.

For the last few weeks I have quite a bit going on. We have been dealing with a lot of drama that is not even ours. Having friends and family does that sometimes. During that time I have found it difficult to write. During all of this I received an email to try out a beta version for a website called Flickchart.

WTF is Flickchart?

From the site FAQ

What is Flickchart?

Flickchart is a website that lets you:

• rank movies to create your own personal list of favorites by using the Flickchart matchup system
• become part of the Flickchart community and help decide what the “Best Films Of All Time” really are
• take part in discussions about particular pairs of movies
  (who doesn’t like to debate whether Star Wars is better than Star Trek?)
• view movie information, popular discussions, fans, and more
• invite friends and make new ones that you can compare your taste in movies with
  (Someone out there must share your love for Gigli?)
• view statistics charts that break down the top movies by popular choice, year, decade, and coming soon: genre, actor, director, and more

I have in the past been openly opposed to all time great lists and have even devoted entire posts to the subject. My opinion on the subject has made the last 2 weeks very interesting.

We all have movies we love and movies we recognize as being good or even great, but how do you rank those movies once you determine they are good?

This is a question that I have been obsessed with for the last 2 weeks as I have been adding titles and ranking movies for hours on end. I have over 1,000 titles and have done 7,000 rankings and I am still no closer to what I would call my definitive top 20 list. Hell the 1,000+ films I have listed are not even a definitive top 1,000. I still have tons of titles to add and rank. As I go through adding films and working out the rankings be sure to check it out and see how we match up. I will start posting my top films from time to time and ask for your opinions.

Again I am going to say that I believe film is too subjective for anyone to compile a true all time great movie list, however it has been interesting to see how my list has been shaping up and I want to talk about these films and why they are on list and maybe why certain films are as high as they are, but we will get to that in moment.

As I have been ranking films the guideline I use to help me make my choices is this: If these 2 movies were on right now and I had to choose what to watch, which would I choose.

So when I am faced with choosing between 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, I must admit that if given the choice I would watch A Clockwork Orange.

This guideline does something else. There are movies that may not measure up to the good/great standard but have a quality to them that you cannot deny and you for some reason end up ranking them much higher than even you think they should be ranked, but again would you watch American Psycho over American Beauty?

I have been learning quite a bit about the way I watch movies and what types of movies I enjoy the most. Let’s take a look at some the top flicks on my list as of today and see if I can explain what I mean through example.

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie I will drop everything to watch if I am flipping through channels and see it is being aired. I don’t care if I have missed half the movie I am still sitting down and watching the rest. I can’t not do it. I feel much the same way about Pink Floyd: The Wall. However if both are being aired, which one do I watch?

Shawshank is a story that shows what determination and knowing your skills can do. The Wall is something you cannot even begin to explain. It is an experience and that experience changes each time you watch it, but it is always something that affects you.

In all honesty if I had to choose between the 2, I don’t think I could. I would spend the time flipping back and forth watching both.

American Beauty is a great character movie and has taken on a more personal meaning in the last year for me. Spending a year unemployed and now working part time for a toy store has given me a completely different way of identifying with the main character. The move has become more personal. I have even started getting back into shape. I will be 35 this year and my part time job feels like a retirement job. That job you get when it just does not matter anymore and you like going to work because it gets you out of the house. It’s a job you have fun doing. Nothing like a real job where you drag your ass into the office day in and day out, cursing the idiots you work for and feeling yourself die piece by piece each day.

It is often in being able to identify with the characters in a personal way that makes us love certain movies so much. This explains why I have High Fidelity on the list. It really is a chick flick for men, told from our perspective. That is why men love this movie so much. It tells our dirty little secrets without us ever having to utter a word and explains how so many feel or has felt at some point into our lives. It is a personal story that most can find some personal meaning in. There is one moment of great universal truth that every man has experienced at least once in this film and it this:

“You are as abandoned and noisy as any character in a porn film, Laura. You are Ian’s plaything, responding to his touch with shrieks of orgasmic delight. No woman in the history of the world is having better sex than sex you are having with Ian… in my head.”

This is exactly how men think.

I want to point out that long before I ever saw Clerks, I always listed The Empire Strikes Back as my favorite Star Wars movie. It was a very character driven film. We got to watch characters evolve before our very eyes and it had the biggest surprise ending ever.

Darth Vader: If you only knew the power of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.

Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!

Darth Vader: No. I am your father.

Audiences everywhere gasped in unison.

One thing I have found to be a common theme with many of my top movies has been characters and does the movie speak to me on a personal level. It is the movies that speak to me on a personal level that I love the most. When I am feeling off and need to find my center I usually watch one of the Clerks movies or I may even throw in one of several Cusack flicks.

If you want to see what my top list looks like click here. Also to end this post here is my current top 20 films. Be warned this will change. As with everything else that constantly evolves, my love of film is no different.

1 The Shawshank Redemption 1994 Frank Darabont

2 Pink Floyd: The Wall 1982 Alan Parker

3 Blade Runner 1982 Ridley Scott

4 The Princess Bride 1987 Rob Reiner

5 A Clockwork Orange 1972 Stanley Kubrick

6 The Prestige 2006 Christopher Nolan

7 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick

8 The Dark Knight 2008 Scott Ewers

9 Alien 1979 Ridley Scott

10 Almost Famous 2000 Cameron Crowe

11 A Scanner Darkly 2006 Richard Linklater

12 The Usual Suspects 1995 Bryan Singer

13 Donnie Darko 2002 Richard Kelly

14 American Psycho 2000 Mary Harron

15 The Empire Strikes Back 1980 Irvin Kershner

16 American Beauty 1999 Sam Mendes

17 High Fidelity 2000 Stephen Frears

18 The Crow 1994 Alex Proyas

19 Clerks 1994 Kevin Smith

20 The Quiet Man 1952 John Ford

Like a lot of my fellow movie bloggers I am also interested in making a film or two. This weekend I received the 3rd draft of a script, Catharsis, I am working on at Last Rockstar Productions. I will be working on edits and have a another meeting to make sure we have the best script possible as we move forward to shoot.
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This is the first post for a new feature that I will be doing from time to time. We often hear way too much of the same thing over and over again. You can find a hundred sites with the same news about the same Hollywood flicks and it feels like everyone is copying each other where news is concerned. I recently got my backstage pass so to speak into a company that is putting out films you just don’t hear anything about. I will be talking about their films from time to time as I find films that interest me.
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If you are easily offended then do not watch this movie. In other words I got a kick out of it. I think had Uwe Boll made this film about the same time Team America World Police came out it would have been received better as it is the same kind of in your face offensive humor.  My kind of humor.
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I have been putting together some interviews for the near future and in each instance I find myself explaining where this started, where it is, and where I am planning on taking it. Here it is. Pay attention there will be a test later.
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